A review by shookone
Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

5.0

This was the second Discworld book I ever read, and I read it and reread it a million times as a teenager. Absolutely impossible for me to think about this book in an objective way that isn’t colored by nostalgia. I just love it too much, and it is very obvious to me in hindsight that the things this book says about class were hugely formative for me (and not just the Boot Theory! The Boot Theory is very good, but Terry has lots of other things to say about that sort of thing in this book). So I’ll just say that Men At Arms is a huge improvement over Guards Guards (which is already a very good book), and is the point where Vimes and Carrot really come in to their own as characters. Part of me wants to say that this book feels like a huge step up for the Discworld series, but the level of quality has been so high over the last few books in the series that it’s more like it’s clear Pratchett is at a point where he’s just cranking out hit after hit.