Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - Guards! Guards!

I must have read this 10 years ago. I loved it then. I love it still.

But while, during the first reading I felt this was the literary equivalent of a fast paced 80's US cop caper (think Dirty Harry, Lethal Weapon), it might be my age, but on the second reading I got a lot more of a noir feel, even brushing very close to the movie Blade Runner. Wait! Hear me out!

I always picture Ankh-Morpork as dingy, dirty, but always in daylight, in fine weather. But for much of the book it's raining non-stop (like Blade Runner), set at night (like Blade Runner), only becoming sunny and daylight towards the end (Like...), dealing with issues of fate, destiny, creations run amok, and ends pretty much paraphrasing Gaff's final aside from the movie.

On to the actual plot: A secret society is releasing a Dragon into the city, the City Watch having not much else to do (as crime is regulated by the criminals... it's ingenious, but complicated) decide to investigate. This is the first of the Discworld books to really flesh out the city, The Patrician, and The Librarian. Everything gets another dimension to it, pushing past parody levels. The fantasy breaths on its own. And Pratchett continues to make incredible, likable, imperfect characters. For example, beautiful characters always have some endearing flaw, the bad guys always have some justification, ugly people are described with such love, you would happily marry them.

If there was a downside, it's the infrequent direct quotes from other movies ('I'm too old for this', 'Here's looking at you, Kid'). They dragged me out of the world for a moment with an eye-roll, even though I remembered giggling at them the first reading. But the ones that were sown into the fiction (e.g. Vimes quoting Dirty Harry, but he's holding a swamp-dragon) are a delight to read and recognize.

A popcorn book if ever there was one.

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ampharos906's review

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adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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dave_ex_machina's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

An early volume of my favorite Discworld arc!

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clayby's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett

This is where the dragons went. They lie... Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word we're looking for here is... dormant.

I wanted to start 2023 off with something more light-hearted, and Guards! Guards! ended up fitting the bill perfectly. I'd never read a Discworld book before, the sheer number of them had intimidated me in the past. However, I discovered a little while back that there were subseries that were mostly self-contained, and off to the races I was!

As for Guards! Guards! itself, I have to say that I really enjoyed Terry Pratchett's style of humor, underlaid with a bit of seriousness. It was wonderful being dragged along through the streets and back-alleys of Ankh-Morpork, getting to know the City Watch, the locals, and their customs (good and bad).

I'm looking forward to working my way through the rest of the City Watch series.

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