It was great, clearly more of a Sam Vimes novel than a “city watch” novel, but it was great and one of my favorites. Clearly top shelf Discworld.
In the end, did Lord Vetinari reveal he has always known that it had been Vimes or did he say he just realized it was Vimes a moment ago? I think Vimes actually changed the past, so didn’t Lord Vetinari tell him he just realized Vimes had been in the past?
I still think Small Gods is the vastly superior novel, but Night Watch is in my top level of Terry Pratchett. Might be the second best one, but certainly third or fourth if not number two.
I have a confession to make. I have not been a huge fan of the Witches novels up to this point. I was hoping for a series as enjoyable as City Watch, but it just hasn’t been even close. My thoughts up to this point were:
I thought Witches Abroad is where things were supposed to improve, but it didn’t for me.
Lords and Ladies? A GREAT novel, in my top 3-4 Discworld books so far. I loved it. I felt like all three witches clicked into greatness in this book. Each had their awesome moments and I fell in love with them at various points of the book.
Definitely the best Witches book so far and one of my favorite Discworld books overall. I was hugely and happily surprised.
21 books in, here is my ranking from best to worst:
Small gods
Lords and Ladies
Night Watch
Reaper Man
Feet of Clay
Men at Arms
Soul Music
Fifth Elephant
Jingo
Guards! Guards!
Mort
Wee Free Men
Unseen Academicals
A Hat Full of Sky
Witches Abroad
Wyrd Sisters
Sourcery
Colour of Magic
The Light Fantastic
Equal Rites
Faust Eric
I just finished my second full readthrough, though including the Tiffany Aching books for the first time. I think I Shall Wear Midnight was a great book to go out on.
You know that there was one more Aching book, right? The Shepherd’s Crown was probably the least of the Aching books, but that still puts it pretty good.
Well, the first good Rincewind book. In fact, with him teaming up with Cohen and his “colleagues”, it was kind of like a City Watch book. I am a teacher and I could not help but relate to his plight. I, too, dream of the great free period in the sky.
Yeah, so this was definitely the best Rincewind book so far and I found myself laughing throughout. I’ve always enjoyed the Wizards, but I think Rincewind’s stories have been muddled up to now. In fact, I kind of hated Colour of Magic.
It’s been a while, but I had a set of Discworld books I’d give to friends to start them out.
1 and 2 : Color of Magic and Light Fantastic. I feel they’re all the same book some publisher decided to split in half. They belong together.
3 : Witches Abroad because of the potato salad comment and the river boat scenes.
4 : Reaper Man because I couldn’t find Mort at my bookstore and RM was great.
5 : **Guards! Guards!" **. A great intro to the Watch.
Have you guys read the Science of the Discworld books? I see that after Last Continent, Rincewind branches off into those.
How are the Science books? How much of them is “novel” and how much is science book?
Edit: I just realized Unseen Academicals is sometimes called a Rincewind book. I read it and he was barely in it, so I don’t count it that way. More like a stand alone “wizards” book.
“And Captain Carrot is organizing a football match.”
“He’s what?” said Vimes, lowering the bow. Suddenly the world had to be real again. If Carrot was doing something as dumb as that, things were normal.
“Quite a large number of fouls so far, I’m afraid. But I wouldn’t call it a battlefield.”
“Who’s winning?”
“Ankh-Morpork, I believe. By two hacked shins and a broken nose.”
Late response, but, yep, I agree. I liked the first witches books, but they’re basically parodies with a trio of goofy witch cliches. L&L is where they become real characters and get real interesting. L&L and Maskerade are both delightful, with Carpe Jugulum being solid but messier and maybe a little bit too much of a parody again.
The witches are my favorite subseries, but only because I LOVE the Tiffany Aching books which dovetail out of the witch books and feature the coven at their absolute best-written.
This started in Witches Abroad, for me - Granny’s visceral *anger *at her sister for “getting to have all the fun” and forcing her to “be the Good one” was very good character writing, and the whole idea of “feeding people to stories” was prime early Pratchett-being-literary.
