Discworld #8 - Guards! Guards!
I'm blogging my way through all of the Discworld novels. Use the tags to find those posts.
There have been a few books in the series so far where I was sure I hadn't read them in the past but turned out to be wrong. Guards! Guards! is, possibly, the opposite. I was confident that I'd read this as a teenager but now that I've finished it I'm not at all convinced. Some parts rang a vaguely familiar bell, but I'm wondered if that's because I'm seeing elements that pop up again in later Watch novels (since we've firmly established by now that Pratchett often revisits and reworks older material).
This is the longest Discworld book so far, only just beating Pyramids. These are the first two that feel like "full length" novels rather than fairly short fare. Thankfully, where Pyramids was easily the worst one in the series, Guards! Guards! is comfortably the best so far.
I think we're looking at the largest cast of characters of any of the books so far here, and we're also looking at the most complex book in terms of plotting. There's a lot going on here and it does get a little chaotic, but it feels like controlled, purposeful chaos. Pratchett's pacing is fantastic, and he's really starting to play with the tropes of genre and with our expectations of the story in a way that's you can tell is fun for him while also being satisfying for the reader. There are a few moments (like people getting roasted by the dragon) where we all know what's about to happen and so he simply doesn't bother to show us - instead he just assumes we've figured it out, and moves on. In less capable hands it would feel cheap and lazy, but Pratchett makes us part of the gag and it works beautifully.
Speaking of genre tropes and expectations, there are two things I want to highlight specifically - one is a thing that I think works really well here, and the other is just a tiny detail i thought was interesting. Ill start with the tiny detail and work backwards.
That tiny detail is in our introduction to Nobby, which reads like this:
Men like Corporal Nobbs can be found in every armed force. Although their grasp of the minutiae of the Regulations is usually encyclopaedic, they take good care never to be promoted beyond, perhaps, Corporal.
This is just a throwaway line, and I think had I not also read all of Joe Abercrombie's books earlier this year I wouldn't have picked up on it. But I did, so I did. The reason it stood out to me is that this is a perfect description of Corporal Tunny, who first appears in The Heroes and later shows up again in A Little Hatred. I don't know if this is an actual character trope/type that I've simply never noticed before that both authors are playing with, or if Tunny is Abercrombie's grimdark version of/homage to Nobby, but either way this little connection really made me smile.
The larger thing, and something that I think is a real strength of the book, lies in Pratchett's regular return to the same sort of stories. We've seen him do the "hereditary heir raised away from their birthright who steps into their rightful role in a moment of great need" thing a few times already. He's played with that idea in Sourcery (sort of) and more explicitly in Wyrd Sisters and Pyramids. Carrot is very much set up as this sort of character right from the beginning of the book, and the entire narrative is pointing at him finally stepping in to save the day and step into greatness. We spend the whole book watching Pratchett set up expectations then say "you guessed what was going to happen, and you were right", so it comes as a genuine surprise at the end here when it's acknowledged that there's likely more to Carrot than anyone realises, but it never bears fruit. The story and the world move in a different direction, and Carrot settles into his life as a humble Watchman. It's a really effective subversion of our expectations and I think it's one of the best things in Discworld so far.
It's still not perfect, of course. Pratchett is still occasionally reaching for jokes and setting up punchlines, and the satire hasn't quite started to bite fully yet. But in Vimes and Vetinari you can really see it starting to brew, and I really feel like between this and Wyrd Sisters the series is beginning to hit its stride. (I still don't know what the hell happened with Pyramids, but I guess they can't all be winners).
Thoroughly enjoyed this one.