The City Watch books

[pip]

Might fill us in on the book here


http://88.208.209.103/minisites/terrypratchett/forum/viewtopic.php?t=819

Good place to expand your reading or pass on a classic .

Sadly Josh Kirby passed away in 2001 but he was 72 and it was peaceful.

we have numerous pictures to remember him by and the new discworld calendar is a nice tribute as well.

 

[Tonyblack]

Plus, Josh is depicted on the UK cover of Night Watch by Paul Kidby.

 

[deldaisy]

Plus, Josh is depicted on the UK cover of Night Watch by Paul Kidby.

Ohhhhhhh
WHERE????
You know Tony, you post some really great links and fill in some wonderful blanks,and I think "What a nice guy"..... and then you do THIS. (and only because you know its my favourite cover and have most probably scanned it more than the regular reader)
Which one IS he? And are there any other secrets to the Nightwatch cover I should know?

 

[Tonyblack]

Plus, Josh is depicted on the UK cover of Night Watch by Paul Kidby.

Ohhhhhhh
WHERE????
You know Tony, you post some really great links and fill in some wonderful blanks,and I think "What a nice guy"..... and then you do THIS. (and only because you know its my favourite cover and have most probably scanned it more than the regular reader)
Which one IS he? And are there any other secrets to the Nightwatch cover I should know?

Would you believe I did a quiz about the cover?

Josh is Number 9.

 

[Beyond Birthday]

Off-topic but how is Lords and Ladies? Is it a good Ogg book to start with?

 

[Beyond Birthday]

That's the one that focuses on faeries, right? and how they glamour people?

 

[deldaisy]

Off-topic but how is Lords and Ladies? Is it a good Ogg book to start with?

Ohhhhhhhh I loved Lords and Ladies. Wish I had a copy here right now to reread it. A few of my favourite quotes in that book. Well faeries are averse to iron right? They are trust me. In one part of the book, the teen Queen is hiding in a room full or armour for the night while the Lords and Ladies roam the castle unbidden. There is a rat with the Queen (oh gods I need the book!) TP describes how the rat runs into a suit of armour (as a rat would) through the foot plate, up along the leg and along the body. The Queen and the rat need to lie low and survive until dawn until they can get help.
The rat is running through this full suit of armour.... and the fateful line... "The rat wondered if he would make it through the knight." I grew up KNOWING Faeries weren't the Walt Disney Tinkerbells most kiddies knew of.... this book confirmed it and put it into words. Thats why I loved it.

 

[Tonyblack]

Off-topic but how is Lords and Ladies? Is it a good Ogg book to start with?

Oddly enough, in the forward to Lords and Ladies, Terry suggests that you should have read the previous Witch book (Witches Abroad) before hand. I don't think it's all that necessary and I can't think of any other book Terry has done that in.

But it's a really good book.

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

Off-topic but how is Lords and Ladies? Is it a good Ogg book to start with?

Oddly enough, in the forward to Lords and Ladies, Terry suggests that you should have read the previous Witch book (Witches Abroad) before hand. I don't think it's all that necessary and I can't think of any other book Terry has done that in.

But it's a really good book.

I think possibly that's due to Magrat going into her strop at the beginning because Verence had gone ahead with the wedding arrangements without her. With Granny and Nanny also involved in that partially, it might have seemed odd to see Magrat getting quite so mad over it all unless you'd read WA - which does explain why that was as WA's the start of Magrat becoming a mature and 'natural-born' witch due to Granny's over-the-top bossing about in that. In Wyrd Sisters we see her more as a less confident (though far more scholarly) forerunner of the Annagramma character in the Tiffany series, with her obsession with the trinket/crystal end of the witching game

 

[raisindot]

Off-topic but how is Lords and Ladies? Is it a good Ogg book to start with?

L&L is my favorite witches book and is in my Top 5 DW books. It does help if you've read Wyrd Sisters and Witches Abroad first, just so you can some background on the witches and hope they got to where they are at this point. However, I read Carpe Jugulum as my first witch's book and, although it didn't get the nuances, it still held up on its own.

J-I-B

 

[raisindot]

Oddly enough, in the forward to Lords and Ladies, Terry suggests that you should have read the previous Witch book (Witches Abroad) before hand. I don't think it's all that necessary and I can't think of any other book Terry has done that in.

Y'know, I never even remembered the forward when I was reading it.

Having re-read it again just now, I find it interesting that he does here, because I've a felt that Lords and Ladies is one the books where PTerry began to move away from the "self-contained parody jokey books" of his early stages into the character and history driven epics of the books he did since that time.

He wrote L&L after "Small Gods," which, arguably, may have been the first "second stage" DW book (some may argue for Witches Abroad, because it really stands by itself and isn't so dependent on having read Wyrd Sisters before it).

Maybe at the Small Gods/Lords and Ladies point in the series Pterry consciously realized that he was moving beyond 'comic novels with funny repeating characters' into creating something much more deep and signficant. The foreward in L&L might have been his very self-conscious way of admitting that he recognized that he was moving in this direction.

It would be very interesting to ask him why he did put the foreward here.

J-I-B

 

[Beyond Birthday]

Well I was able to read Thud! without much of a problem. I did think Vimes and Sybil were dwarfs before doing some research...but other than that I could follow the plot and get into it with no problems. Gushing aside, I just need to know whether or not I'll be able to 'get' the characters and motivations by reading this book alone. I don't mind missing a few nuances here and there. I also just like the idea of evil faerie.

Oh, and I have just ninety more pages left in Guards! Guards!

 

[Tonyblack]

Well I was able to read Thud! without much of a problem. I did think Vimes and Sybil were dwarfs before doing some research...but other than that I could follow the plot and get into it with no problems. Gushing aside, I just need to know whether or not I'll be able to 'get' the characters and motivations by reading this book alone. I don't mind missing a few nuances here and there. I also just like the idea of evil faerie.

Oh, and I have just ninety more pages left in Guards! Guards!

It's kinda difficult for those of us who have read the books in order from Colour of Magic to know what it's like to pick up the characters from later books. But it does seem that lots of people do manage to dive in to the books and still follow the plot and understand the caracter nuances.

By the way - you've probably noticed how the topic has shifted from your first post. We do that sort of thing a lot on this forum.

 

[Beyond Birthday]

Well I helped steer it away from that, too. The question is still up in the air for anyone who can answer it: Can I read Lords and Ladies by itself and still get the story/be invested in what's going on?

 

[Tonyblack]

Well I helped steer it away from that, too. The question is still up in the air for anyone who can answer it: Can I read Lords and Ladies by itself and still get the story/be invested in what's going on?

Oh sure!

If you don't understand anything - just ask.

 

[Beyond Birthday]

Okay, I'm really close to finishing Guards! Guards! I just got to the part where *spoiler* the Librarian rescues Vimes. Two things I've noticed:

1.) Intelligent mice, over a decade before The Amazing Maurice. Nifty.

2.) Wonse laughs maniacally...does this make sense to ANYone? I mean, I get that it's an "evil laugh" joke but, seriously, all of his plans failed and he's now being used by what he once considered his tool. I dunno, maybe that was to show that he's gone insane or maybe it was just because getting Vimes in a dungeon was the only good thing that'd happened to him so far. I mean, working for the dragon is shown to be a fate worse than death so what the hell? Why is Vimes all like 'Now a maniac is in charge.' Um...Vimes? You just said that he wasn't in charge like two pages ago! I mean, am I missing something here? I guess he could be referring to the dragon but I doubt it. Maybe Superboy Prime punched reality again...oh, wait, I'm thinking of Star Trek.
[/i]

 

[deldaisy]

Okay, I'm really close to finishing Guards! Guards! I just got to the part where *spoiler* the Librarian rescues Vimes. Two things I've noticed:

1.) Intelligent mice, over a decade before The Amazing Maurice. Nifty.

2.) Wonse laughs maniacally...does this make sense to ANYone? I mean, I get that it's an "evil laugh" joke but, seriously, all of his plans failed and he's now being used by what he once considered his tool. I dunno, maybe that was to show that he's gone insane or maybe it was just because getting Vimes in a dungeon was the only good thing that'd happened to him so far. I mean, working for the dragon is shown to be a fate worse than death so what the hell? Why is Vimes all like 'Now a maniac is in charge.' Um...Vimes? You just said that he wasn't in charge like two pages ago! I mean, am I missing something here? I guess he could be referring to the dragon but I doubt it. Maybe Superboy Prime punched reality again...oh, wait, I'm thinking of Star Trek.
[/i]

Beyond: You are unfamiliar with the "maniacal laugh"? When things go SO wrong SO SO SO SO very wrong its way past crying, or a gentle guffaw and a lightly tossed aside "Such is life" (?????) [ see my posts on "the date with the Veet man"... "a visit to the Koala Park".... "a day at the office and a spilt vase" ]

 

[Beyond Birthday]

I finally finished Guards! Guards! tonight. I'll keep it simple and just say that I really liked it. You get a glimpse at the kind of character Vimes becomes in the later books and I find it especially funny that this one ends with "THE END".

I still prefer Night Watch and Thud! (Night Watch being my favorite I think) but I wouldn't be surprised if Guards! Guards! is the one everyone else prefers.

So now I've got four more Watch books to read. It'll probably be either Men At Arms or Feet of Clay next.

 

[DaveC]

I finally finished Guards! Guards! tonight. I'll keep it simple and just say that I really liked it. You get a glimpse at the kind of character Vimes becomes in the later books and I find it especially funny that this one ends with "THE END".

I still prefer Night Watch and Thud! (Night Watch being my favorite I think) but I wouldn't be surprised if Guards! Guards! is the one everyone else prefers.

So now I've got four more Watch books to read. It'll probably be either Men At Arms or Feet of Clay next.

It has to be Men at Arms, its the next one plus it show the natural progression in the size of the watch growing - it is a lot more emotional too as you've come to expect from th elater books, then read Feet of Clay, also very good

 

[Beyond Birthday]

The only thing I'm worried about with Men at Arms is if it's too preachy. You know, because that's the one about gun control.