Guards! Guards!

Now. Guards! Guards! is actually my first foray into a saga of Discworld books that I have no previous familiarity with. I know the basics. I know that it follows the misadventures of Captain Vimes of the Ankh-Mopork City Watch. But that’s about it. I’ve had some narrative run-ins with some members of the Watch previously, so this should be fun.

And it was! Guards! Guards! is a fantastic entry in the Discworld mythos. It starts by introducing someone who I understand to be a core member of the series, Carrot, a gangly human raised in a family of Dwarfs. Carrot joins the Ank-Mopork City Watch at its lowest point. For the duration of the book, the Watch only consists of the aforementioned Captain Vimes, Carrot the new recruit, and two mainstays, Corporal Nobby Nobs and Sergeant Colon. The book goes to great lengths to demonstrate how little the respect for the Watch is compared to the expectations of the eager yet incredibly naive Carrot.

The core plot of the book kicks off at a rather interesting pace, with various details foreshadowing the later elements of the story without truly spoiling anything. Occasionally the story shifts focus to a shadowy secret society mostly consisting of idiots and steered by an annoyed but power-hungry Supreme Grand Master. This shadowy secret society, unsurprisingly, becomes very important, though not for as long as you might suspect.

WARNING: THAR BE SOME SERIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD

Most of the book centers around the Watch, mostly dragged along by the over-eager Carrot, attempting to investigate what appears to be dragon attacks, though true dragons were largely thought to be extinct on the Disc. Eventually it is revealed that the shadowy secret society from earlier in the book was using a tome stolen from Unseen University’s library to summon the dragon, and that they were using it to try to make a play on the throne.

I won’t spoil any more than that, you’ll just have to read (and enjoy) the book to learn the rest. It’s a great book and I recommend it thoroughly.