Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

 

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Night Watch is one of those novels be they standalone or part of a definitive series that I really can not give a review that would do it justice. The novel really does attain a level above any of the previous and excellent City Watch subset of Discworld and provides a hard edged story which retains some of the humour of previous novels while focusing on characterisation, plot and insight into our world.
So Duke Vimes soon to be a father is dealing with a ruthless criminal named "Carcer" who simply has all the brakes off, a number of watchmen have died at his hands but now he is cornered above the Unseen University Library with Vimes closing in. It's at this point that a huge storm hits and lightning and magic combine to send the two men back into the recent past of Ankh-Morpork. The current patrician Lord Winder is extremely paranoid (with good reason) and has the military, the watch and the Cable Street Particulars (Brutal Secret Police) enforcing curfews and clamping down on any dissent but revolution is in the air with Lord Snapcase as the favoured politician to solve all the cities problems. Vimes through a number of events figures out when he is and with the help of The Sweeper is tasked to well live this life as the recently deceased Sgt. John Keel a man who as it happened trained a very young Samuel Vimes so many years ago.
The novel really is that good, it is a complex time travelling story with many characters we know well from previous novels albeit much younger but everything fits so well and it's so difficult to find faults with it. I guess it's not a novel that would rate highly as someone's first visit to the Discworld but is that a flaw, nah I don't think so, this is a masterful tale within a series yet feels different for all the right reasons.


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