In which Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh Morpork, is thrown back in time with a murderous criminal. To the end days of Lord Winder's Patrician-ship. And a Watch House that needs roughed into shape with a young recruit still wet behind the ears by the name of Sam Vimes.

The story of the barricade and the 7 casualties of the stand off between the citizens of the city and the cavalry is poignant and moving. I love Vimes' conversation with Vetinari in the last pages of the book. ( )

It's so hard to write a good time travel novel. Add in a crazy magical place like Ankh-Morpork and you have yourself a hard job. But of course, Terry Pratchett is up for anything, always, and he has fun while he does it. Fairly certain this man could have written a history of the English language that featured some kind of pun loving ogre with a kitten sized griffin for a sidekick...and it would have made complete sense. I am only sorry that he is not around to do it. ( )

I quite enjoyed it.

167

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2023/02/review-of-night-watch-by-terry-pratchet... ( )

I liked the first 20 pages of so, but the copy I had was misbound. (Bad HarperCollins!) It contained not 1, not 2, but 20+ pages of a contemporary spy thriller. First I thought, "Oh, alternate universe in addition to time travel? Cool." Then I realized that even though the page numbers and fonts matched, the title, author, chapter headings, and page layout did not. Would have kept reading, but I missed the actual time travel part.


2nd review: found a copy with all of its
pages. Enjoyed the book. ( )

Excellent, one of the best Discworld books. It's still funny, but a more mature work as we delve into Vimes maturity as he confronts his past.

It makes a parallel to the French Revolution (or pretty much any revolution) and it's very effective. All of Pratchett's Discworld books are political (in the sense that they use satire to poke at our hipocrisies and illuminate us on freedom, on personal responsibility, on prejudice, etc). But this one is more overtly political while not being preachy.

Great book, made me want to go back and reread the first Vimes books, which I'm currently doing.

( )

The pinnacle of the Guards sub-series, this story confronts Vimes with a test of values as he is transported to a dark period in Ankh-Morpork's past and his own youth. Only he's not young and can't even be himself, but can fulfill an important role. Watching Vetinari as a young assassin is an extra delight. ( )

And once again we are immersed into the colorfully riotous galaxy of Discworld in which the cynical Captain Vimes must travel backwards through time to catch a cop-killer all the while trying to avoid a revolution which would sooner see him dead than live out his future.

Night Watch is genuinely Pratchett operating outside the Tiffany Aching's timeline. We are given a profound insight into the workings of Ankh-Morporkian society, its politics and society which Vimes travels (or more accurately: tears) through in order to succeed in his quest and return to his own timezone.

As is expected with Pratchett, Night Watch is enigmatically immersive and a humorous filled ride in the deeper realms of human expectations with its most profound lesson being that maybe governments are not the problem but the people who select them and then opt for one revolution after another to better their lot. ( )

The best description for this book is “more”. It has a more complex, more ingenuous, and more serious plot than the previous watch books. It also is more emotional and more moving (both in terms of sad and happy moments). And yet, in many ways, this is the funniest watch book yet. It will make you laugh until you cry more. More irony, more humor, and more political satire.

This is Vimes at the top of his game and Pratchett at the top of his game. One of most memorable Discworld books. One of my all time favorites. (Which is saying something cause books that make me cry usually don’t make it into my list of all time favorites to be re-read numerous times.) It contains some of the funniest, most memorable (and at times darkest) jokes of Discworld too. This book takes the watch series to the next level. ( )

Með betri bókum Pratchetts um Diskheim. Sam Vines, yfirmaður Næturvarðanna, er að kljást við raðmorðingja sem er kolklikkaður (eðlilega) og drepur sér til skemmtunar Næturverði borgarinnar, þegar þeir báðir kastast aftur í tíma þegar íbúar Ank-Morphok er á suðupunkti og borgararnir undirbúa byltingu gegn klikkuðum og ofsóknaróðum kóngi. Allar gjörðir til góðs og slæms hafa afleiðingar en Tímamunkarnir keppast við að halda hlutum innan marka. Skemmtileg og spennandi. ( )

The chief of the Discworld city watch wants to get Back to the Future.

3/4 (Good).

It has an engrossing story, although there aren't any surprises. It's not very funny. Enough silliness to lighten the mood but not enough to get a laugh seems to be pretty standard for the City Watch books - which is fine by me, I'd much rather have a good story than a joke. However, most of the better characters are barely in this one.

And it spends a lot of time relating Vimes' personal philosophies, which are off-putting. Besides being generally pro-cop (and yes, he's a cop, that's unavoidable, but does he have to spend so much time going on about it?), there are also such gems as an argument against gun control, and a lot of excitement for the death penalty.

(Feb. 2022) ( )

I'm probably not doing this book justice with my rating, but as much as I think the writing is brilliant, it dragged for me badly.

I started it thinking it would work for my werewolf square in bingo, and by the time I realised it definitely wasn't (Agula the werewolf is only mentioned and never appears), it was too far in to stop.

This is a much deeper, more serious storyline that any of the other Discworld books I've read so far and there's a lot of political philosophy (and a fair amount of quantum physics). It's brilliant political philosophy, but I was expecting werewolves, so Poli-Phi and string theory was more work than I was prepared for. (Also, I'm not a fan of time travel plots.)

Still, this is Pratchett and as MT said, for a book I was complaining was hard work to get through, I was laughing out loud an awful lot. Pratchett is a genius at using his words, and the scene involving the ox and the raw ginger had tears coming to my eyes (and likely theirs). So many laugh out loud moments in this one that even though I'm glad it's over, I'm definitely also glad I've read it.

(Luckily, there are enough other elements in this book that I can use it for the Free Space.) ( )

Night Watch is the 29th novel in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and the 6th of the City Watch sub-series. Sam Vimes goes on a timey-wimey adventure into Ankh-Morpork and the City Watch's past landing in the middle of major historical events in the city.

"And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up."

Time travel is one of my least favorite tropes in fantasy. Thankfully that is not the focus of the story, though there is plenty of fretting over changing the future by altering the past. Instead it is the story of the events that shaped young Sam Vimes into the old Sam Vimes we've grown to love over five previous books by, err, himself. Or something. There's definitely a time loop involved.

That bit of head scratching logic aside, this is a surprisingly poignant read and not the story I was expecting for a Watch novel. Pratchett has some insightful things to say about society, policing, government and duty that feels extremely relevant in these trying times. I don't know how Pratchett does it. This story is both disturbing in how real it is and comforting for the hope it provides. ( )

Huh, go figure. Just as the 28th book in this long-running series took a (what I believe to be terrible) left turn, this very next one also took an unexpected turn, and is a darker and more violent book than any of the previous 28.

And it's also an extremely good one. Probably top five in the series so far. The laughs are still there, the humour as biting and witty as ever, but there's this whole other level of depth that Pratchett delivers this time around.

I will say I was actually reluctant to read the next one in the series because of how much I disliked [b:The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents|34534|The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Discworld, #28)|Terry Pratchett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1168566225l/34534._SY75_.jpg|1179689], but this one completely restored my faith. ( )

Night Watch starts with Vimes and a few others visiting a number of otherwise forgotten graves. When asked what was going on: "you had to have been there."

One magical lightning storm later and Vimes ends up 'having been there' for a second time.

Given Discworld takes aim at just everything that can be discussed within the fantasy framework has put together--and honestly, what can't?--and that this is the 29th published Discworld novel, it's not at all surprising that we get a novel about time travel and having to ensure that time happens the way that it was supposed to all along.

The rest of the plot goes about as you'd expect, with Vimes having to deal with what he knows will happen without screwing things up too badly while making sure the younger Vimes grows up into the man he is now. It's actually an interesting way to do character development. In the future/present time, Vimes is head of a a larger expanded and mostly non-corrupt City Watch. A noble. An ambassador. So how do you grow from there?

Put him in a situation where he's still grown and learned all he has, but doesn't have the resources he's grown used to.

It's really well done and an enjoyable book, even if the general structure doesn't really do anything surprising.

Well worth the read, although you'd like want to read at least a few of the other City Watch books first so that you have a bit of a background on Vimes and the others.

Semi-random quote of the:

"You'd like Freedom, Truth, and Justice, wouldn't you, Comrade Sergeant?" said Reg encouragingly.

"I'd like a hard-boiled egg," said Vimes, shaking the match out.

There was some nervous laughter, but Reg looked offended.

"In the circumstances, Sergeant, I think we should set our sights a little higher--"

"Well, yes, we could," said Vimes, coming down the steps. He glanced at the sheets of papers in front of Reg. The man cared. He really did. And he was serious. He really was. "But...well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I'm pretty sure that whatever happens we won't have found Freedom, and there won't be a whole lot of Justice, and I'm damn sure we won't have found Truth. But it's just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg."

Well spoken. ( )

Sir Samuel Vimes slips through a crack in time as he is fighting an archenemy, and has to save the city from inept leadership in the past, while trying not to change the future, including a younger version of himself. While I missed his usual supporting cast, the book grew on me as it went on, culminating in the birth of Sam and Lady Sybil's son, as he returns to the present with some medical help from an old friend during a difficult birth. ( )

Love this book. Definitely Pratchett writing at his prime. ( )

Quite good; trouble is, one is used to expect a Discworld novel to be even funnier than this one. ( )

Carcer and lilacs. Makes me cry when I start it. ( )

STARTS TO SCREAM AND DOESN'T STOP

This book was EVERYTHING if you, like me, have been reading The Watch books and have fallen in love with everyone and then THE TIME TRAVEL PARTY TIMES OF SEEING BABY EVERYONE.

But it was also like. The narratives Pratchett tries to tell about human "nature" through the Watch books are not ones I necessarily agree with--I have way more hope about humanity than he-as-Vimes does--but here we seem to settle on a common ground around mutual aid, where people of a vast variety of political stances can still come together and take care of one another. And how even Vimes who doesn't believe in a larger good of humanity (specifically human here) can participate (you don't have to like people to work for liberation!) and protect one another and also just. I WEEP.

Also it was SO TENSE THE WHOLE TIME Sir Terry really went "we shall now give you LOTS OF THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT AT ONCE" and just loaded it all up from basically minute one? But the ending is so satisfying and good and nnngh I loved this book, no reservations, no weird racism... just so much love. Bless this book. A real delight. ( )

Absolutely the best of the Discworld books I've read (so far...), with thrilling action, a refreshing change of pace for the Watch books, and completely un-put-down-able. Highest recommendation! ( )

"It takes a thousand steps to get to the top of a mountain but one little hop'll take you all the way back to the bottom." Qu to Sam Vines in Night Watch ( )

Well written and as funny as usual plus there's time traveling. ( )

Likely the best of the Discworld series. ( )