Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

[lightreads]

Another Watch novel, in which Sam Vimes Is accidentally transported decades into the past in pursuit of a murderous psychopath, whereupon he must play the part of the old Sergeant who first taught young Lance Corporal Sam Vimes what it means to be a copper. Meanwhile, political unrest spreads across the city, the old Patrician is on his way out, and the barricades are going up. Vimes knows what’s going to happen – he was there after all – and he’s visited the graves every year since. And now he’s got to do it again.

Oh. Oh, oh, oh. Okay, I’m fine – it will take a lot more than this book to reduce me to a gibbering, inarticulate wreck. This isn’t as funny as some Discworld novels, by which I mean that it’s not as giddily hilarious, though it is dry and sarcastic and unflaggingly witty. Pratchett usually has a selection of particular targets for that wit, and this time around It’s Les Miserables, which he sort of turns inside out and upside down and then sets it going with a gentle pat. This is a book about doing the job that’s in front of you, about being clever in the face of stupidity. Vimes starts out just trying to catch a killer, and ends up trying to assure his own future and, by the end, save as many innocent bystanders as possible from being crushed between the military machine and the shifting tides of political power. Because Vimes is a copper. His master is the law, and this book wholeheartedly believes that the law is not something we are given by higher authority, it’s something we’ve got just because we are.

And that’s what I love about the Watch novels, I think. They’ve got a keen, unerring nose for the right of the thing, and a deep disdain for those who maintain there is no right. And by ‘they,’ I mean Sam Vimes. Vimes believes in things like justice and truth with a purity and strength which should be laughable, and which is usually idiotically obnoxious in a hero. But Vimes’s justice and truth aren’t the cheap knock-offs, manufactured of pasteboard and excuses glued together with a stew of stick-up-your-ass. They’re the real thing, and they’re worth it. And that’s just so wonderfully refreshing after spending too long navigating between two equally irritating options – the books that’ve never heard of a shade of gray, and the ones who think absolutes are just way too much fucking work, so better chuck away the whole mess in a nihilistic tantrum. (Sorry. That last one, in particular, really gets on the nerves of this pragmatist with an idealist’s heart).

So these books make me happy because they believe in things with towering strength, and the things they believe in are actually worth it.

Also, I love Sam Vimes with every fiber of my being.

Comments

[nomadicwriter]

Also, I love Sam Vimes with every fiber of my being.

Me too. He's one of very few fictional characters I would genuinely call a hero, because he's not following some external ideal of how to be a 'good' person; he's just doing what he knows bone-deep is right, and doing it in the full knowledge that it's not going to change anything and any smart person would have long ago bailed and tried to find another route, but doing it this way is right, dammit.

As a lifelong cynical optimist, I deeply admire that. And I think that's why I'm most drawn to cynical, pragmatic, sarcastic characters above any other. It's not that I like a jaded worldview - in fact, just the opposite (I can't stand the nihilistic stuff either). But what I truly consider heroic is the ability to keep fighting for your cause when you're one hundred percent convinced that it's futile. I think the one true test of a moral code is whether you stick to it when nobody sees, nobody cares, and nobody benefits; that's the point when all other factors have been kicked away, and the only motivation left is, "I'm going to do this because it's right, and that's all there is to it."

And that's why I think all the idealistic good-guy heroes in the world will never be able to inspire me. It's all very well to float through challenges in a glorious haze of certainty that Good Will Triumph In The end, but until you hit that wall where there's nothing keeping you going but sheer bloody-minded determination, you haven't really proved anything.

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And I think that's what it is that lends Vimes's convictions a sort of purity, without making them feel cheap and Disney. They're complicated and sometimes unpleasant for him, and yet not . . . sullied, in that jaded way. It's a neat narrative trick that I really just can't stop poking at.

[josanpq.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting. What's the first one? Do they all have the word WATCH in the title?

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

It's usually best to start with Guards! Guards!. The Watch books are a subseries in a vast Discworld series, for which there are complicated graphics and flowcharts suggesting reading order. Someone linked to a really good breakdown of what goes where in the comments to my last Pratchett review -- just click the author tag.

[insptr-penguin.livejournal.com]

Also, I love Sam Vimes with every fiber of my being.

Hear, hear!

BTW I was serious about enlisting your casting ability for the play reading of Men at Arms if you are interested. I was thinking sometime after curling season...

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I think L should be Vimes again, she was great. But we need a really good Detritus *huggles him*. Hmm!

[insptr-penguin.livejournal.com]

She *was* a great Vimes! But she might need to duke it out with my dad, who also loves Sam with every fiber of his being and has his heart set on playing him. So, we can see, but a good Detritus is also needed. Someone with good chemistry with whoever plays Cuddy. Hmm

The Librarian is sadly absent in the play version I have, but we could always just insert him back in for the ook of it. :)

I'm thinking of hosting it at my place, sometime after the Women's Challenge...