The book traces the rejuvenation of the Watch through two major events: the arrival of adopted dwarf Carrot from the country, with a yearning to join the Watch and pursue law and order, much to the embarrassment of his new colleagues and the arrival of an actual dragon who begins casually laying waste to the city. Vimes is a drunkard, Sergeant Colon is a practiced coward devoted to ensuring the Watch does nothing more than avoid trouble, and Corporal Nobby is an extraordinary creation in roughly humanish form. He’s the perfect foil for Vetinari, the two hyper-competent men with wildly divergent views of the people they are sworn to protect, and the tensions and allegiances between the two are a core pleasure of the book.Īt the start of the book, the Night Watch is essentially a joke. In Guards! Guards!, Pratchett plays with a number of conventions, most obviously noir in the creation of Sam Vimes: captain of the Night Watch, a man who drinks to forget his own pain and disenchantment, and a natural detective who’s not afraid to circumvent the chain of command in pursuit of justice. The Watch books are perhaps the most rewarding sub-series within the Discworld canon, both setting up long-running mysteries for the series (Is Lance-Corporal Carrot really the long-awaited heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork?) and introducing a ground-level view of Ankh-Morpork that allows the stories to intersect with a wide range of characters and plot ideas. Fat-shaming of fat positivity? It’s surprisingly hard to tell.
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