lightreads | Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, and Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

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Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, and Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

This is the city of Ankh-Morpork on the Discworld, where the guards are men (until affirmative action, anyway), where the dwarves are men (though there must be women somewhere behind the beards), where you can walk the streets in safety (as long as you pay your annual fee to the thieves guild), and where solving crime can get a bit complicated (especially when you don’t just pick who-done-it ahead of time and send Detritus the troll after them about it until they confess in self-defense). Guards! Guards! is about the mysterious summoning of a dragon, Men at Arms is about affirmative action coming to the night watch (they hire a dwarf, a troll, and a woman), and Feet of Clay is a complex little knot about golems.

Okay, so, for anyone out of the loop, these are just a few out of an enormous parody series about the Discworld, which is, you know, a flat disk which rides through space on the backs of four elephants which in turn ride on the back of a turtle. Obviously. They poke a lot of mostly gentle fun at fantasy novels, while simultaneously being very good ones themselves. The trick of the humor is a sort of deadpan acceptance of the rules – of fantasy novels, of stories in general, and sometimes of our world. The books ask what it would really be like if the things we believe about how the world ought to work are actually true, and generally concludes that it would be pretty freaking ridiculous. There’s a great sequence in Guards! Guards! where a few characters are trying to kill a dragon with one shot from one lucky arrow. It’s a million-to-one chance, and so they of course know that it must work. But then they start worrying – what if it isn’t exactly a million-to-one? What if it’s only a thousand-to-one? Everyone knows that would never come through. They do think, however, that the odds of a bowman making the shot backwards while standing on one foot with a handkerchief in his mouth are just about right.

The thing about Pratchett is that he’s completely shameless. Most of the funny works because it’s delivered so straight-faced, but once in a while you just know he’s sniggering back there somewhere because you’ve just let him get away with a really freaking awful joke. From a footnote:

Fingers-mazda, the first thief in the world, stole fire from the gods. But he was unable to fence it. It was too hot. He got really burned on that deal.

How can you not love that sort of cheek? Also this, just because:

The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though it were designed by Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than stories and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is knowledge=power=energy=matter=mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel black hole that knows how to read.

Anyway. It’s riotously funny, but like really good humor, it’s because it’s set on deep foundations. The political and social commentary flies thick and fast, and even with all that, the characters simply shine. Well, except for the ones who don’t bathe.

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I've missed some of the guardsmen books in between, but Thud! is brilliant — he takes on the centuries'-long fued between the dwarves and the trolls, and the battle between the moderates and the fundamentalists... with a children's book in between. And Going Postal and Thief of Time may be even better than Small Gods, and I didn't think i'd ever say that...

And the new Tiffany Aching book, the sequel to Hat Full of Sky, is finally out!
*happy sigh*

I'm all excited -- ginormous series that I haven't read yet! And it's not that I'm slowor anything -- I tried a Pratchett book several years and just could not get into it. I can't remember which one it was now, though I think I'll know it when I see it. But I'm so glad I gave it another shot.

I adore Pratchett, but I can't always read them depending on energy levels. There are just so many rules and characters to follow and some days my brain isn't up to that. But when I can read them, I love them. I still chuckle over the nude philosphers, although I cannot recall what book that is.

These were just perfect for me this past week -- funny, but not entirely cotton candy. They kept me entertained, feeling well-fed, but not bored or working too hard. I'm really going to have to spread them out, though, because I can tell from just these three that I could easily overdose.

Hey, I stopped by the local bookstore on a quest for my sister's birthday, and they had a new Neil Gaimon, a collection of short stories called Fragile Things. And the very first story in it is a Sherlock Holmes riff from Watson's PoV — which remembers that Watson's just back from Afghanistan when he meets Holmes and shell schocked enough to move in with a guy who uses the mantlepiece for target practice.

I thought of your last post on derivative fiction when I saw it. I've only read a few pages, but I thought it might make you happy. Makes me wonder if Neil G. reads slash...

Oh, yeah, that one has been getting some great buzz. I don't have access yet, but I'm sure it will pop up in my usual haunts soon. That's awesome that he starts out that way -- and it does make me happy.

I don't know about slash, though God knows it wouldn't surprise. I do know that he's definitely read fanfiction in general, not to mention written some -- there's a Matrix story he wrote which I'm pretty sure the studio actually posted and used as promotion. So not fanfiction in the underground community sense, but I know he's familiar with the concept.

Oh, who am I kidding -- he's totally read slash.

The thing I find most incredible about Pratchett is that he can go from being absurd and slightly whacked out, to saying something remarkably profound and beautiful in the same paragraph. Whilst I think he misses more than he hits now - Discworld has been going on for too long - when he hits, it's a beautiful thing.

Yes, that's it exactly right on both counts. There's this great bit in Feet of Clay where Vimes and crew are doing their thing (being hilarious) and there's a golem, and then Pratchett just drops this one little line about how Golems run on the words in their head and in like half a sentence he draws this quiet, beautiful parallel with, well, everybody. Sigh.

I'm reading the books thematically rather than chronologically -- guards stuff first, and then maybe back at the beginning for Rincewind. It's really letting me see how his style changes. A little less funny, a little sharper around the edges, a little more knotted up. Good and bad, though I've also been warned that some either later stuff is simply tired. Ah well, I'm sure there's a metaphor about a few soft apples in a great big bushel, or something.

Oh I do so love those books-- glad to hear someone else having fun with them!
I, uh, have the whole series, except for the brand spanking new one that just came out if you need any...
*is not a pusher*

Anyway. It’s riotously funny, but like really good humor, it’s because it’s set on deep foundations. The political and social commentary flies thick and fast, and even with all that, the characters simply shine. Well, except for the ones who don’t bathe.

Yes. Yes. And yes. Thank you for putting it so articulately.

You were the one who turned me back onto them, y'know. I'd tried some book or other a few years back and just couldn't get into it. Don't remember which one it was now. Clearly I did not start in the right place, and I was not in the appropriate mental state.

I think I have most of them, though not Thud!. But it will be quite a while before I get there.

Obviously it was not the right gateway drug, I mean book in the series for you. It's funny, there are wars among Discworld fans that remind me of the Ray wars in DS-- except here they are Watch versus Witches or Rincewind versus Death or some permutation of the above. I'm a Watch girl myself and think you might possibly be as well.

I am thrilled that I helped with you trying them again, and if/when you need Thud, you know who to hit up. I'll bring it over with bells on.

Oops, that was me. Forgot I wasn't logged in at work.

Reminds me of the never ending! Shards of Honor, no Warrior's Apprentice debates. Yeesh. It does make a difference, but as demonstrated with Pratchett (and Bujold, too, as I actually read Diplomatic Immunity first and was rather bored until I picked up Komarr on a whim a year later) it does matter where you start, but if it's going to catch a hook in you somewhere, it will regardless.

And yeah, I'll hit you up. May just do that anyway -- haven't seen you in a while. *pout*.

Oh I remember those debates! I started with Warrior's Apprentice--and actually had to reread it because the first time was post-concussion and I forgot what I had read, but that's another story-- I think reading that one versus Shards of Honor may change whether you approach Miles as Cordelia and Aral's offspring or the center of your leap into the series, and conversely Cordelia and Aral as the core characters rather than the parental units of Miles. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but serves, I hope, to illustrate the subtler distinction I'm trying to make.

I'm not surprised Diplomatic Immunity left you cold-- it's the book that excites me the least in that series, although still sound and enjoyable in a larger context.

And yeah, I'll hit you up. May just do that anyway -- haven't seen you in a while. *pout*.

I know. It's a travesty that must be fixed! *is helpless before the power of the pout*
I will stop spamming your comments now, I promise!

We're hosting thursday, in case you didn't know. *pouts more*

bayleaf just let me know. I'm there.

"Night Watch" is the absolute best of the Guards line of books. You do need to read the others to get the most out of it, though.

I think you'll like the Death/Susan books when you get to them. Death is quite wonderful in the ways that he just doesn't *get* humanity, though he tries very hard. And they have the Death of Rats in them.

Death is quite wonderful in the ways that he just doesn't *get* humanity,

In fact, that does sound like something that will really appeal to me. *intrigued*

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Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, and Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

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