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Title: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett ISBN: 0-06-102064-8 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 31 July, 2001 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.76 (46 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: I'd give it 6 stars if I could.
Comment: Guards Guards! is an amazing book. It's the first Discworld book to take place solely in the smelly city of Ankh Morpork, and Ankh Morpork being one of Pratchett's greatest creation, this book already has a charm of its own. The plot focusses on the Night Watch, a group of three drunken men. A "dwarf" who has firm beliefs about the law. He unfortunetely doesn't realize that in Ankh Morpork, there's such thing as "legal crime" so he goes about arresting thieves guild members, and Vimes has to teach him how Ankh Morpork works. Meanwhile, some cultists are trying to summon a dragon in an effort to take over the city...
The best character is Captain Vimes. When the book starts out, he is at the bottom of the pecking order of the city. He begins to straighten up, though, and near the end, he is a competent and witty officer of the law. There's a good part where Vimes has two men put in jail, and when he is told that the jail isn't very strong and that the prisoners will eventually be able to break out, he responds "I hope so, because the very first drain we come to, you're going to drop the key down it."
The other characters have their ins and outs. Vimes is the star of the show, but the rest of the Night Watch has its moments. Lord Vetinari, ruler of Ankh Morpork, is also a good character. His dark philosophy and strange opinions on how to run the city make the book even more fun to read. And the dragon just makes it better.
So overall, GET THIS BOOK, it's one of the best in the Discworld series, and should not be missed.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Book in a Great Series
Comment: For my money this is the best book that Pratchett has written in the Discworld series. You get so many great elements added to the story: the alcoholic Vimes, Nobby and Colon, Carrot, the Patrician, Sybil Ramkin, and of course Errol the abnormal dragon.
This book is a great place to pick up the Discworld series, if you haven't read any of the others don't feel threatened by it being the...like 9th book. A whole new cast of characters is introduced along with the wonderful Ankh-Morpork. It's more than just a comedy about a dragon running through the streets. (With Pratchett nothing is that easy.) It has some serious commentary on Law and on human behavior. I see Pratchett as a kind of teacher, who hides his lessons in his hugely entertaining stories.
All that said, buy this book!! I apologize for all of you who will read it and need to read the rest of the series as soon as possible. It will cost you some money (he's got somewhere around 26 Discworld books alone) but you may end up thanking me.
Rating: 4
Summary: An Excellent Start for the City Watch Discworld Novels
Comment: In my humble opinion, the novels about the city watch are the most consistently excellent subset of the Discworld novels, and well worth reading in order. This is the first, and introduces Vimes, an interesting character destined for great things. This book is also a great introduction to Pratchett's humor; where most fantasy novels would give us impressive, glittering beasts with no grounding in physics, in _Guards! Guards!_ we first meet "real" dragons, the swamp dragons: noisy, gurgling creatures capable of eating anything flammable and producing flame via worrying chemical reactions in their complex, gurgling digestive tracts. Unfortunately this also endows them with an unnerving tendency to explode messily when startled. The "noble dragon," by comparison, summoned by magic, seems rather unreal -- how could a creature that heavy actually fly around? But that is the point: the city watch books are the least magical of the Discworld novels, and this means they are not as outrageously funny as some of the others, but they are the most grounded and convincing satires about _this_ world. We meet Lady Sybil, who will be the great woman behind Vimes, helping him to become a great man, and Carrot, a human raised by dwarves who is an innocent abroad, without prejudices, and an oddly heroic born leader. All together it is quite a mismatched crew, but somehow it all works, and watching the whole crew lurch to life is entrancing.
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Title: Pyramids by Terry Pratchett ISBN: 0061020656 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 31 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett ISBN: 0061020664 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 01 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Mort by Terry Pratchett, Victor Gollancz ISBN: 0061020680 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 01 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett ISBN: 0061020621 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 30 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Eric by Terry Pratchett ISBN: 0380821214 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 05 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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