Novel review: Terry Pratchett - Guards! Guards! (1989) & Men at Arms (1993)

Recently finished Men at Arms after having devoured Guards! Guards!; still have Mort, Night Watch and Going Postal on the docket. Thought I'd write a review about these two since they really deserve it.

Discworld. A very intimidating series of 41 volumes forming loosely connected sagas all taking place in the same universe. When I finally decided to tackle the beast, I had been hearing about it for quite some time already, especially in circles where Tolkien isn't the sole author of classic fantasy for adults.

I first started with the initial release, The Colour of Magic , despite warnings about its substandard quality compared to what Discworld would later offer. I didn't finish it, it was seriously all over the place. But I did get a few small glimpses of Pratchett's talent, especially his humour. Enough to start again with one of his most acclaimed releases.

I was instantly sucked in by Guards! Guards! and actually laughed out loud frequently while reading it. There are three important ingredients that go into making such a perfect dish:

• The style. Inspired, witty, flowing, irreverent, polished, few tasteful references. And seriously hilarious. To the point where he could get laughter from a grocery list.
• The characters and their interactions. Especially between Sam Vimes, the traditional hard-boiled and righteous (to a fault) copper, Carrot, a not-so-gentle giant pure and simple but not stupid and Lord Vetinari, the down-to-earth ruler of a city he barely manages to keep hobbling along.
• And finally the city of Ankh-Morpork itself, happily and sadly too big to fail, like a fantasy New York. Corrupt, nonsensical but never lacking in novelty.

Actually, on that last point, this isn't my first encounter with that because one of my favourite series, Garrett P.I., follows that formula almost religiously with its own TunFaire: take all the fantasy races you can think of, those of Tolkien and European mythology, put them all in a Big City™ with a good amount of Big City™ diseases (corruption, alienation, melting pot constantly on the verge of race wars, street violence) with some colourful characters to interact with and ta-da! You got the perfect canvas for fantasy comedy; though Garrett P.I. is much less comedic in nature, clearly carrying some of Cook's signature bleakness.

Anyway, if you add a plot that's not half-bad - even if it's really nothing but a prop for those three aforementioned points - you really can't go wrong.

After that success, I continued with the next novel, storyline wise: Men at Arms. Let me make it plain: it follows the same formula but simply isn't as good. The style remains flawless and the city gets further developed, but the added characters, while fun, simply can't hold a candle to the original cast (still "mostly" present) and the convoluted central plot got too much focus when it's not what makes Pratchett good.

Mind you, it's still a very good novel, just not on the same level of perfection as its predecessor.