The Night Watch of the sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork consists of only three people (although people might question if Nobby Nobbs is entirely human) led by the depressed and shambolic Captain Samuel Vimes. No one is more surprised than he when he finds out that they have a new recruit from the mountains who actually volunteed for the Watch. No one ever does that. The fact that young Carrot Ironfunderson claims to be a dwarf, even though he’s 6 foot 2 and seems to keep misunderstanding how the city is run is something Vimes really doesn’t really have time to worry about. He’s busy either getting drunk or recovering from a hangover.
Then, a series of mysterious incidents around the city leave people entirely vaporised, with wall tiles melted from high heat. Now everyone knows there’s no such thing as actual dragons, that they disappeared a very long time ago, but it sure looks like there may be a dragon terrorising innocent (and not so innocent city dwellers). The city’s patrician is very clear that the Watch leave the situation alone, no need to investigate and cause critical questions to be asked. One of the reasons why Vimes is the drunken leader of a sad bad of unwanteds, however, is that he doesn’t really like to conform to what people expect of him. He enlists the help of Lady Sybil Ramkin, who knows everything there is about the only dragons that SHOULD exists, tiny swamp dragons.
Not that anyone, let alone Vimes, is very happy when it turns out that there is in fact a big, dangerous dragon threatening the citizens of Ankh-Morpork. Now normally, these sort of situations seem to require a hero to be revealed to slay the dragon, and win the hand of the daughter of the king, but the Patrician doesn’t even have a daughter (only an elderly aunt, who doesn’t seem to want to marry anyone) and the ransom offered really isn’t very high, so none of the regular heroes feel motivated to show up for the job. It might be up to Vimes and his rag-tag squad to save the city, the unlikeliest heroes of all.
One of my all time favourite books and how I got my father-in-law into Terry Pratchett (he’s a funny older children’s writer, I don’t know how the hell he missed this gem of a human for 30 fucking years).
Terrific review. I have thought about going back and re-reading all of Discworld, instead of just picking and choosing favorites. I think I’ve read “Guards Guards” twice, and “Hogfather” three times. Of the Watch series “Night Watch” and “Jingo” are the standouts for me. All another reason the recent BBC series makes me violently ill/angry.
The new “adaptation” makes me so full of rage that I can’t think of it for too long. “Night Watch” is a genuine masterpiece, and was rightfully nominated for non-fantasy literary awards. I haven’t re-read the series for long enough to remember how “Jingo” holds up. I may have to allow myself a revisit to Ankh-Morpork and the Watch throughout this year, it’s been far too long since I read any Pratchett.
What adaptation? If I don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist.