Terry Pratchett: Night Watch

Hi

Here’s another review of one of TP’s novels. Night Watch is the 29th Discworld novel and it counts 474 pages. This is the first Discworld novel without a cover by the late Josh Kirby. The new artist (Paul Kidby) does pay him tribute by placing him in this picture.
You can find my other reviews of Terry Pratchett’s novels here.

My grandfather died so I had a hard time concentrating on anything. Luckily I was reading two books at the same time so I decided on something I knew I would like and is fairly easy to read. TP never disappoints.

 “Truth! Justice! Freedom! And a hard-boiled egg!
Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had it all. But now he’s back in his own rough, tough past without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck.
Living in the past is hard. Dying in the past is incredibly easy. But he must survive, because he has a job to do. He must track down a murderer, teach his younger self how to be a good copper and change the outcome of a bloody rebellion. There's a problem: if he wins, he's got no wife, no child, no future...”

Vimes gets send to his own past while pursuing the murderer, Carcer.
However, this past is very different from what I thought it would be. Ankh-Morpork is on the verge of revolution. And these Men of the Watch are not his men. Some of them are corrupt, others are lazy, some still have to join and some have to learn to become the ‘best’ they can be. Vimes can see how different they were before and what needed to happen to stop de laziness and the corruption in The Watch.
Learning about our ‘old’ characters and how they became who they are now was a really fun ride. I love Vimes. This novel deepened his character and I loved that. The part where he puts on these old shoes and walks around the city is just genius. And Nobby Nobbs is brilliant! Every word out of his mouth and every sentence about him makes me laugh.
This novel shows us how a revolution or a war can get glorified very easily by losing sight of the men fighting it. These ordinary people are the real heroes. Not the ones making the decisions way up.
Vimes already knows the outcome but he doesn’t always see the way to it. Our Vimes has matured and learned by his past. The past he sees now happening to his younger self. And his younger self really needs help to be able to get where Vimes will be in later life. It’s getting weird huh.

This is definitely not a Discworld novel you should start with. You won’t be able to understand the people he’s meeting in the past that we already know from previous books. And to understand how he traveled in time, you should read Thief of Time first.

I loved it, even though it is a bit harder to read then some of the others. You should definitely read this, but you’d better start with some older novels.

Happy reading.
Helena