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420 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
“Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.”
“Colon thought Carrot was simple. Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was.
Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.”
Sam Vimes is set to leave the Watch after his impending nuptials to Lady Sybil Ramkin, the noblest and richest woman in Ankh-Morpork (“The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.”). All while the Watch expands and diversifies - now they employ a troll, a dwarf, and a w- .... ummm, let’s just say a woman - while a string of suspicious murders with a strange new weapon eventually known as a gonne occur - and ethnic tensions between dwarfs and trolls intensify, including in the Watch, and someone needs to sort it all out.
“Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.”
“Personal isn't the same as important.”
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
One of the absolute highlights of this book is a slow budding friendship between the traditionally sworn enemies, a dwarf (Cuddy) and a troll (Detritus). It’s interesting to see the slowly unraveling of ingrained stereotypes, the tentative building of trust and respect, the learning to look beyond the superficial - appearance, ethnicity - and discard the focus on differences and instead see and understand the individual underneath it all - a friend, a colleague, a *person*. Pratchett is amazing and making you see the bigger whole instead of smaller insignificant parts, and I absolutely love it.
“People ought to think for themselves, Captain Vimes says. The problem is, people only think for themselves if you tell them to.”
“Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, “Oh, random fluctuations-in-the-space-time-contiuum!” or “Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!”
“I comma square bracket recruit’s name square bracket comma do solemnly swear by square bracket recruit’s deity of choice square bracket to uphold the Laws and Ordinances of the city of Ankh-Morpok comma serve the public trust comma and defend the subjects of His stroke Her bracket delete whichever is inappropriate bracket Majesty bracket name of reigning monarch bracket without fear comma favour comma or thought of personal safety semi-colon to pursue evil-doers and protect the innocent comma laying down my life if necessary in the cause of said duty comma so help me bracket aforesaid deity bracket full stop Gods save the King stroke Queen bracket delete whichever is inappropriate bracket full stop”