Guards! Guards!

[fajrdrako]

Today I finished listening to Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett, while doing exercises. Then I listened to a good part of it again, while cooking. Then I listened to it as an audio-play, thanks to a tip by filkferengi.

Loved it - Pratchett just gets better and better as I continue. I hadn't read any of the City Guard books before, but I knew from friends that Vimes was worth reading about.

Observations:

1. It made me cry several times, but the best time was near the end, when Carrot was writing home to his mother, and said, "I think this is like happiness."
   
   
2. Loved the scene where Vimes faces the attacking mob with Errol: "Do you feel lucky?"
   
   
3. I was sure either Carrot or Vimes was the real heir of the kings.
   
   
4. Loved the Patrician and the Librarian. How is it that Pratchett's best characters are the most ruthless ones?
   
   
5. On the other hand, I loved Lady Sybil too, and she wasn't ruthless. She was sweet. I used to know a woman just like her. (Only without the dragons.)
   
   
6. I thought there was something weird about the scenes with the Dragon who became King. It wasn't till I got to the end, I realized it was because Pratchett was avoiding using a pronoun in reference to the King. I think. Don't have the written text to check.
   
   
7. I loved it whenever Vimes said, "Not in my city."
   
   
8. The story, and the character of Vimes, is exactly what I most love in a story: the down-and-outer who becomes heroic, but who never considers himself a hero. The sense of team- and family-building is a good part of it, too. (Other examples: Captain Jack Harkness, Francis Crawford, Sydney Carton. In a skewed sort of way, the Doctor fits the pattern, too.)
   
   
9. But the best thing, the very best thing of all, was a bit of word-play that encapsulated the whole plot and theme. When we first meet drunken Vimes, he's thinking, "The city is a woman." When we get to the end of the story, he looks at Lady Sybil and thinks, "This woman is a city." Brilliant, absolutely brilliant, bringing it all to a sort of inverted full circle, thematically and emotionally for Vimes.

Eager now for the next book. Bring 'em on.

Comments

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Oooo, a different adaptation! *scampers off to grab* I have the BBC Radio version, which I have yet to listen to, and the Tony Robinson one, which has neither 1 nor 2 in it and thus I had forgotten them.

I've become so invested in the characters as they've evolved that I find it a bit difficult to go back earlier in the progression, such as "Guards, Guards." Wait until Pratchett hits his stride and starts putting out things like Night Watch and Thud and The Truth and Going Postal. I have all of those as unabridgeds... although I want the Tony Robinson of them as well someday, just for novelty's sake.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Wait until Pratchett hits his stride

What? You mean he hasn't yet?

I have all of those as unabridgeds...

I really don't like abridgments.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I don't like abridgements usually, and the person who's writing these tends not to realize that the setup for a punchline can be chapters earlier and thus cuts one or the other. But I like Tony Robinson, so I enjoy his versions of the books I don't like as much.

And no - Pratchett is nowhere near his full stride yet in Guards, Guards. Look at the difference when you get to Men at Arms even, and then to Feet of Clay - and by the time you get to Night Watch it's like night and day.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Okay - that's incentive to continue, which of course I don't need anyway.

Pratchett is very, very good at setting things up. It's one of his strengths.