Four stars. This is the second book in Pratchett’s City Watch series of books. The first one was Guards! Guards! (link to my review).

Our team of underdogs barely escaped with their lives from the incident with an interdimensional dragon, but they received little reward from the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork (to be fair, they didn’t ask for much), and in addition he tasked them with modernizing the force by welcoming recruits with minority backgrounds, in this case different species: a dwarf, a troll, and a buxom blonde woman. The woman’s case is peculiar, because she has a secret of the hairy variety (I don’t know if that sounds better or worse than it actually is).

Once again, the plot revolves around someone trying to turn the city of Ankh-Morpork into a monarchy. The last king died a long time ago, but some overeager young noble has realized that our charismatic Carrot, the newest guard in the previous book, who was adopted by dwarves and raised as one even though he ended up taller than most humans, is the rightful king. Attempting to return the city to its supposed former glory, this noble intends to steal a unique weapon from the Assassins’ Guild and sow so much chaos that the citizens will be open to revolution. Unfortunately, the weapon in question is too hardcore for anyone to handle, as well as possibly sentient.

The aforementioned Carrot replaces Captain Vimes as the protagonist of this story. Vimes is leaving the force and getting married, to his dismay. The former second-in-command is happy to hand the force to the tall, hunky recruit that in different times would have led a kingdom. Regarding the minority recruits, we have Cuddy, a one-eyed dwarf who can effortlessly cleave a fly in half with his throwing axes; Detritus, a particularly stupid troll who knocks himself out whenever he salutes; and Angua, a woman who ended up as a guard because she hasn’t lasted long in every other job, who rents a room in a flophouse populated by the undead, and whose intimate relationships end as soon as they discover her secret. I appreciated Angua’s reserved, pragmatic nature, and some of the highlights of the story involved her private investigations, during which she’s followed by a mangy, sentient dog named Gaspode.

Corpses, inter-guild conflicts, ethnic clashes between dwarves and trolls, dog supremacists. A clever sequence involving the identity of a clown’s corpse, as the protagonists dealt with the members of his guild, reminded me of some advice I read on a book on writing: come up with a peculiar concept, then fill your story with plot points that could only happen given the peculiar concept. Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork is a bizarre yet familiar place in which, for example, an orangutan librarian playing the organ at a wedding, even though half of the keys play animal noises, is a perfectly reasonable thing to happen.

I was going to rate this story a three and a half. The novel is less detailed and carefully written than Guards! Guards!, particularly in the beginning, where the prose came off as lazy. However, I was very fond of the little mystery involving the identity of the killer, I enjoyed hanging out with the guards, Angua looked quite attractive in my head even in her golden form, and some moments achieved poignancy, so I bumped up the rating half a star.

Apparently some theater group put together a play of this story. It looks quite fun. I have no clue how they would have pulled off the supernatural aspects, though.

I look forward to the next entry in the City Watch series, of which we will never again receive new installments, because its author got to meet a skeletal character who only speaks in capital letters.

Look, the first thing I remember in my life, right, the first thing, was being thrown into the river in a sack. With a brick. Me. I mean, I had wobbly legs and a humorously inside-out ear, I mean, I was fluffy. OK, right, so it was the Ankh. OK, so I could walk ashore. But that was the start, and it ain’t never got much better. I mean, I walked ashore inside the sack, dragging the brick. It took me three days to chew my way out. Go on. Threaten me.