Back in January, there was a bundle deal on a bunch of Terry Pratchett books, so I bought them.1 Some of these are duplicates of books in our library, some are replacements, and some are books I’m not terribly likely to read. (I bounced off Tiffany Aching way back when; not sure why.)
Many are books that we never owned. Around the turn of the century, when Pratchett was coming out in hardcover in the US, we’d take turns buying the books with another couple and pass the copy around. I think the same thing happened with mass markets, though I don’t remember as clearly. Earlier than that, I read some from the college SF club’s collection.2 The first Discworld book I read was a public library copy of The Colour of Magic back in the mid-’80s. (They didn’t have The Light Fantastic—it’s possible it hadn’t come out yet—so for a number of years I had Pratchett categorized as funny but not terribly satisfying.) Still, I was intrigued, and I knew Ankh-Morpork was spoofing something without having yet encountered the thing it was spoofing, so I reverse engineered Lankhmar while in elementary school.
Having acquired a trove of e-books, I thought maybe I’d read one, and ended up starting with Guards! Guards! I have always liked the Guards books, but have long been of the opinion that one should start with the second installment of any of the main Discworld subseries, on the basis that the first tends to be spoofy and they pick up more meat going on.
On my reread, I felt more charitable toward the first book, like the “spoof” descriptor should in fact be “high concept.” The last book, Snuff, still feels weak and suffers more from spoofing syndrome.3 Placing the characters in an Austen novel (sometimes) isn’t fully successful, and it’s also not necessary. They already have a developed setting, and while discomfiting a character by making them a fish out of water is a tried and true technique, this book also leans very hard on existing (rather than new) character development. The books between Guards! Guards! and Snuff make for a long, creamy middle.
This is the first time I’ve done a straight-through read of these books; usually years would pass between reading one and the next. As a unit, the Guards book hold up surprisingly well, especially considering they were written serially over the course of twenty-two years. Normally, I expect series might require a little judicious retconning, just due to the vagaries of creativity, author memory, and publishing schedule, but that wasn’t an issue.
While I had no problem reading and enjoying police procedurals while many volumes were coming out, that is no longer the case. I have noted that I have an easier time giving a pass to protagonist cops when a) the system’s imperfections are noted and b) it is not a real-world setting. The Guards books meet those criteria, and also get a blanket exception for being written by Pratchett. He was an aggressively humane author, whose work evolved in the right direction, and the world is a poorer place for his absence.
- I basically only buy DRMed ebooks if they’re on sale in some fashion, because I simply think of them as single-use items. I’ve lost plenty of books in my life, and only a small percentage of those have been due to being unable to access purchases. But those have been the most annoying losses. ↩︎
- When Good Omens came out, it was really amusing to see who picked it up because of Terry Pratchett, and who picked it up because of Sandman. Needless to say, it resulted in a lot of folks discovering a new author to follow. ↩︎
- Since it’s a late book, there’s also a chance it suffers as a result of Pratchett’s illness, time pressures, or other editorial concerns. But “doesn’t work for me as well as other books” can have many less dire explanations. ↩︎
https://aphowell.com/2024/07/16/revisiting-ankh-morporks-guards/
#books #discworld #fantasy #feetOfClay #guardsGuards_ #jingo #menAtArms #nightWatch #snuff #terryPratchett #theFifthElephant #thud_
