Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Guards! Guards!
Book Review: Good, but not great Discworld story.
Summary: 3 Stars
I have been making my way through the Discworld series, and I have really enjoyed it. I thought this book was the weakest of the series. I started and stopped reading this one several times before reading all the way through this time. By no means is this book bad. This book is witty, amusing, and sometimes laugh-out-loud-funny, but it is not as funny as the other Discworld novels.
Guards Guards introduces several new characters: the men of the Night Watch, including their dispirited captain, Vimes; Lady Ramkin, a mountain of a woman who raises swamp dragons and has designs on the captain; and Carrot, a giant young man who was raised by dwarves. A few familiar characters also make an appearance, such as the librarian of Unseen University, who is an orangutan.
An enjoyable story, but I cannot rate it any more highly in comparison with the other superb Discworld novels.
Book Review: Great book!
Summary: 5 Stars
It's been a while since I've read a book that makes me want to laugh out loud, but this one was it! This is the first book by Terry Pratchett I've read (although I've heard of him and looked at some of the books he's written) and I was not disappointed. In fact, I may have to see what other books our library here has of his!Book Review: Great great book
Summary: 5 Stars
My first introduction to the Watch characters. and I love dragons so maybe this swayed my judgement a bit. This book is a page turner and hilarious throughout.Book Review: Guards! Guards!
Summary: 5 Stars
Many die-hard Pratchett fans hold up "Guards! Guards!" as the high point of the Discworld series. I haven't read them all, but this one is certainly a contender. Introducing the city watch of Ankh-Morpork and a host of delightfully screwy minor characters, this book amply demonstrates Pratchett's talent for cramming different modes of writing into a single story.
It begins when a mysterious character leads a secret society on a mission to summon a dragon as part of a plot to rearrange the city government. It continues when Carrot, a towering dwarf, arrives to join the watch. Conflict soon erupts when Carrot attempts to enforce the letter of the law, being the first person in several generations to do so. Also the Librarian is one the trail of a missing book, a case that he'll eventually solve in most unusual fashion.
In the dragon storyline, Pratchett manages to celebrate and criticize formula fantasy at the same time. "Guards! Guards!" also delivers pointed commentary on law enforcement, politics and the type of people who become politicians, hobbyists, angry mobs, the literary community (look for a hilarious footnote on the eccentricities of bookstore owners), and much more. And he includes some darn fine comedy, especially in the first half. In some later books such as "Feet of Clay" he tries to do too much and occasionally loses some threads of the story. But in "Guards! Guards!", the world's greatest literary juggler manages to keep exactly the right number of balls in the air for the whole time. The result is a delight to read.
Book Review: Guards! Take this book to the back of the line!
Summary: 3 Stars
The first book in the "Guards" series is clearly one of Pratchett's earlier works. His writing hasn't achieved the polish that wins him fans and praise from every corner yet, leaving the reader unsure if they would like to try another book by him. If you haven't already met Vimes, Carrot, the dwarves, trolls, and werewolf of the Watch you might want to read the next book in the series first, then come back to this one. You will have missed the meeting of Vimes to his wife, and her habit of keeping odd dragons, but other than that you won't have lost much. This book feels as though it doesn't know what it wants to be yet, or who the character's really are. Later in the series the Guards books become more mystery-esque, here it's straight adventure, and the character's personalities aren't clearly set out yet.