A good Discworld book that explores the early lives of City Watch characters Check out my new youtube channel where I show my instant reactions to reading fantasy books seconds after I finish the book. Night Watch is a solid entry into the Discworld universe, but unfortunately for me it rates lower than some of the earlier City Watch books. While it is more thought provoking than the other City Watch books, it doesn't deliver as many laugh out loud moments. If you're looking for a fant...

I'd honestly forgotten just how much range Terry Pratchett had as a writer. This addition to the Discworld's City Watch series, Night Watch, is easily one of his absolute best. It features Sam Vimes, one of my all-time favourite characters, who gets to meet his younger, rookie self in a truly amazing twist. He's chasing a serial killer in the present, only to face countless pitfalls and challenges from the past after a magical incident sends him and the killer back in time. There's heartbreak, p...

What a joy! Brilliant.I'm rereading this sixth installment of the Guards saga because back in the day, in my eagerness, I read it in one of those unofficial fan translations. And I already liked it then, so now, with a wonderful translation, I've reveled like a pig in mud with the ironies, the sarcasms, the subtle winks, and even the moralizing that so clearly permeates all of Terry Pratchett's books.Everything is a delight: story, characters, pacing, and language. The ending is what we expect f...

Eat more cake when you're that hungry. Stupid mob. Usually, I'm no fan of the crime and thriller genre without extreme violence and psychological terror, with skim and scan-able character-focused investigator plotlines in between, but satires of the genre are definitely my thing, because the stereotypical badass attitude of the detectives is something with huge self-satirizing potential. Just like the serial killers, always the same motivations, childhood traumas, preferred methods, just the lu...

Terry Pratchett might have been the coolest writer on earth. Definitely one of the coolest. In 1969, Steve Winwood and his bandmates in Blind Faith (some little known musicians named Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Ric Grech) sang these beautiful lyrics in the haunting song Can’t Find My Way Home. “Come down off your throne and leave your body alone Somebody must change You are the reason I've been waiting all these years Somebody holds the key Well, I'm near the end and I just ain't got the ...

In one timeline, I read this in 2015, and it completely missed the mark, even though I liked the character of Sam Vimes. It probably had to do with my attempt to understand Pratchett and appreciate him as much as his fans do by reading the series in order. In another timeline, 2021 to be exact, I started rereading with an enthusiastic book buddy, trading off a hyper-Pratchett-esque indie book that was exhausting me with Three Stooges antics and fourth-wall-breaking asides. In the second timeli...

Happy 25th May / Lilac Day, folks!“Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg.” 🪻🥚‐---‐--------History has gone rogue, but Samuel Vimes is in hot pursuit and will catch up in the true Terry Pratchett fashion that is spectacular, gripping, hilarious, and heartbreaking all at once in the MOST AWESOME DISCWORLD BOOK, EVER!The layers, depth, dimensions, angles, aspects, and edges that Pratchett gives to Vimes are beyond amazing and reach their pinnacle in this novel, as...

“Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably Priced Love! And a Hard-Boiled Egg!” I'm still furious at the world for taking Terry Pratchett from us. I miss him – his razor-sharp wit, his pointed humor, the ridiculously clear way he seemed to see the world. When I can lose myself in the pages of his writing – so competent, confident, and simply brilliant – the world becomes pretty tolerable. “Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that yo...

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett is probably my favorite Discworld novel, though I can't quite put my finger on why.I think Sam Vimes' presence is a big part of it. The City Watch books are definitely my favorite "series" within Discworld (along with the Witches and Death). His character arc really peaks in Night Watch, even though he evolves even further in Thud!The time travel element is also a huge plus. It's not the quantum, metaphysical, zany fun of Thief of Time (though Lu Tze does make an a...

While Terry Pratchett is known for the humor in the Discworld series, I enjoy them primarily because—while on the surface, his books do indeed classify as humor, he also writes these almost painful realities, very human thoughts, and incredibly immersive emotions in situations that you generally don't find in most humorous fantasy/sci-fi, which tends more towards parody and caricatures. Though, I wouldn’t exactly say that the Discworld series isn't a parody—because his books *are* parodies, or s...