The principle characters in Guards! Guards! are a small collection of losers who happen to comprise the Ankh Morpork Night Watch. I kept moving chronologically, reading synopses until I read the blurb for Guards! Guards!, and I knew I had my next Terry Pratchett read. The Light Fantastic was out, since that is the sequel to The Color of Magic. I needed to move on to different pastures… I sure as hell wasn’t gonna read The Color of Magic again. Going in, I knew I needed to take a different approach. If things didn’t work out on the third try…well, sorry Sir, three strikes and you’re out. With Pratchett’s recent passing I was inspired by the vast outpouring of love towards this man to give his work a third and final shot. Through the passage of years, and my involvement in blogging, online forums, twitter, and the like, I’ve become increasingly aware of the fact that the lack of Pratchett-penned novels has left a gaping hole in my fantasy reading resume. My reread of The Color of Magic went much like the first, and I left feeling sort of ambivalent towards the whole Discworld thing. Why? Honestly, it was too long ago to remember what exactly it was I didn’t like about that first read, but I stayed away from Pratchett for a number of years, only to return again a few years later for another shot at this vaunted author. Sad to say, The Color of Magic and I did not find sweet harmony together. I started where I normally start with any author that I’m new to, the beginning.

Many years ago I read my first Terry Pratchett book. But this time, something is different – the Have-Nots have found the key to a dormant, lethal weapon that even they don’t fully understand, and they’re about to unleash a campaign of terror on the city.

Captain Sam Vimes of the city’s ramshackle Night Watch is used to this. The Haves and Have-Nots are about to fall out all over again. Insurrection is in the air in Ankh-Morpork. It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the remainder were here to rob, importune or sell hotdogs to the rest.” “Vimes ran a practised eye over the assortment before him.

Discworld guards guards