Booklog 8/2022: Terry Pratchett: Night Watch - Discworld #29

[jacey]

This is my favourite Discworld book ever. As a writer I appreciate that it's a consummate lesson in how to do dramatic tension properly. Vimes, commander of the City Watch,  is chasing a villain through the streets of Ankh Morpork and they venture too close to the Unseen University. Magic flings both of them back in time to when Vimes was a young and impressionable copper, just stepping out into the shady world of law-enforcement and just as likely to learn from bent coppers as straight ones. Luckily he had a role model who put him on the right track, never dreaming that his role model was actually his older self. Complicated? Yes. That wibbly wobbly timey wimey thing is at work here, and it's brilliantly done. Pratchett has killed off beloved characters before (and since) so you're never sure whether Vimes will survive this. There are riots, and, of course, the original villain is still out there and getting more and more dangerous with each passing page. If you only ever read one Discworld book, this is the one.

Comments

[cmcmck]

This is one I like too.