Guards! Guards!

the Bestseller That Inspired BBC's the Watch

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Terry Pratchett: Guards! Guards! (2008)

432 pages

English language

Published Nov. 16, 2008

ISBN:
978-1-4070-3469-0
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4 stars (5 reviews)

Guards! Guards! is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the eighth in the Discworld series, first published in 1989. It is the first novel about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. The first Discworld point-and-click adventure game borrowed heavily from the plot of Guards! Guards!

17 editions

Guards! Guards! Brief Review

3 stars

This book came highly recommended as an entry point into Terry Pratchett's Discworld. I found the characters and story humorous, but it felt like a bit of a slog to get through. I eventually found the humour a bit repetitive, although the story was tied up somewhat nicely at the end.

I am curious if it is worth giving the DiscWorld City Watch series another shot. Are there any better entry points to the series as a whole?

The story is absolutely amazing and, yet again, investigation of civil compliance with the oppression and the nature of evil

5 stars

Recently I had a chat with my friend from China about moral relativism and absolute evil. There I said, perhaps verbatim, "there is no 100% right things, but there are 100% wrong things".

For Pratchett's Patrician, the statement is even stronger. There are no right things at all:

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,” said the man. “You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”

He waved his thin hand toward the city and walked over to the window.

“A great rolling sea of evil,” he said, almost proprietorially. “Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this …