Night Watch (Discworld, volume 29/City Watch, volume 6) by Terry Pratchett

[james_davis_nicoll]

A time-displaced cop struggles to protect history and the glorious revolution from a time-displaced psychopath, as well as from the cop's own better nature.

Night Watch (Discworld, volume 29/City Watch, volume 6) by Terry Pratchett

Comments

[movingfinger]

A Discworld monthly review series would be great! I am a bit afraid to pick up the oldest ones, no lie.

[patrick_morris_miller]

A few decades ago I decided to try Discworld and started reading in publication order. Off the top of my head I can't think of any Suck Fairy bait, but Guards! Guards! is where I hit my boredom threshold.

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting Times' Orientalism: it's a book in conversation with the history of Anglophone depictions of China and Japan so I'd contend its Orientalism is more baked into the superstructure than originating in the book... but it's still in there, so it's completely fair criticism.

[ba_munronoe]

I eventually got rather pissed over the fact that the Agatean Empire went from being clearly a far more civilized country than Ahnk-Morepork (not to mention vastly more powerful) to being a place backwards enough that "reforming" nobles ape all things Moreporkian and apparently there's a *Communist revolution coming?

[scott_sanford]

To be sure, all of those things were true of China at various times.

But I think it's a mistake to try to read Interesting Times as riffing off of the real China when it's so obviously riffing off of low-information English Orientalist fantasies about China.

[eldriwolf]

The first two books are Excellent send-ups of Sword-and-Sorcery, as it Stood, at the time.
Very funny, *VERY* pointed. Satire so thick it stands on its own

[mmcirvin]

Discworld fans tend to have less regard for the first books, but they're not bad; it's just that they're a different kind of satire: primarily parodies of high fantasy literature, rather than satires on the real world as Pratchett saw it (though there was already a bit of that). The focus changed.

The Discworld universe is divided into sub-series focused on different characters. You don't have to read the whole series in sequence. I think I might have a harder time reading the Vimes books now, just because I have a different attitude toward cops and police procedurals than I did when I read them. If Guards! Guards! didn't appeal (as to Patrick above), I might recommend reading more of the books about the witches or about Death.

[mmcirvin]

(I also think "The Colour of Magic"/"The Light Fantastic" actually had the most successful TV adaptation of all of them: the picaresque structure created lots of opportunities for spectacle, where the screen adaptations of later, arguably better books can drag a bit, and Pratchett made a pass on the story to tighten it up and make it more consistent with the later evolution of Discworld.)

[patrick_morris_miller]

I didn't and don't mind stories with objectionable protagonists as such - a big chunk of my TV watching is Britcrime, for some reason - and I read the first few witches and DEATH [1] books. I just didn't find anything in them I liked.

[1] As far as I can tell, markdown doesn't have a way to do small caps. Makes it impossible to properly name the only good operating system that has ever existed.

the first two

[eldriwolf]

They were my introduction to Prachett,(the Only works of his I had, for a few years there.) I feel like I have to defend them. They are a Different thing.
(It is Almost an oranges-and-kumquats kind of thing.) They have their own charm.
They are Not my favorites Now.
I just feel that it is not fair to judge them for being different..

Re: the first two

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah; the Colour Of Magic is doing to fantasy what Bill The Galactic Hero did to sci-fi; that kind of book either doesn't exist anymore or is an entire genre, I'm not quite sure which.

V

[(Anonymous)]

There's some transphobia.

Re: V

[(Anonymous)]

People James's age are used to that. I think the previous Tor reviews scrutinised that dimension of the series in detail that I've forgotten. I remember there's some examination of gender from the point of view of at least one dwarf and a golem, which I won't spoil for reading or re-reading. It's not unrealistic for some other characters to react with hostility or uncertainty. And those cases are about characters who in fact are not human at all, but that may matter less than that nearly all of the prospective readers are. And wait, doesn't one of the human Watch characters explore their own options? Or am I thinking of some other particular characterisation?

Robert Carnegie

[bolindbergh]

Have you considered being contrary and reviewing all of Pratchett's non-Discworld fiction?

[magedragonfire]

The Little Lies - a new review series? Hogfather is such a classic.

[mmcirvin]

This would be an interesting thing to read back-to-back with a viewing of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's thematically similar two-parter "Past Tense".