Night Watch

Main Review:

Coming, as I was, straight from reading The Gun Seller, I rather fancied continuing my sojourn into the comedic and the satirical for my next read. One trip to a second-hand bookshop later, a rather beautiful copy of Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch was in my possession and ready to be enjoyed post-haste.

Whilst I’ve always thought of myself as a fan of Pratchett’s world and style of writing, my actual engagement with the many tales and stories that make up the Discworld mythos is alarmingly small. Prior to picking up Night Watch, I’ve actually only read one story – The Hogfather - and been in a stage production of another - Guards Guards! As soon as I started Night Watch though, I was hooked. The balancing of the fantastical and the humorous comes together straight away in a really neat way. Even though there’s dwarves, trolls and zombies galore, there’s a real sense of grounding to the story, and it all feels a lot more realistic than other, more actively ‘gritty’ fantasy tales.

Admittedly, the sense of the fantastical mundane is diminished slightly when, less than a third of the way through the book, it takes a sudden turn in a parallel universe/time-travel style adventure. Having just finished watching Loki, it was fun to see the same core trope (protagonist befriending a member of a mysterious organisation dedicated to making sure certain things do and don’t happen) given a fantastical twist. Of course, with any time-travel plotline comes the obligatory technobabble sequence to set the scene and explain its limitations, and the quantum underpinnings thrown at Sam (and by extension, the audience) might seem dense enough to make you want to have a little lie down in a dark room for an hour or so. But here, the sense of confusion seems to rather be the point; and the whole scene is done with enough humour (and medium awareness) that even if you don’t really understand what’s being said, it’s simple enough to get the rough gist and just move on.

The further you make your way through the book, there’s enough worked examples of things like ‘branching narratives’ (or Nexus Points to use TVA terminology) that the whole thing remains pretty comprehensible throughout. Even though my knowledge of Discworld is not as in depth as other fictional universes, the opening act, set in the ‘correct’ timeline gives you enough of an introduction to the characters that, on meeting their younger “alternate” selves, you’re able to see, even at a glance, how everything will fit into the bigger picture.

When it’s not giving you a crash course in time-travel tropes, this book is buzzing with class politics. Not in a sub-text way, not in a ‘from a certain point of view’ way, just slap-bang right there on the page. Pratchett’s characters so frequently discuss the oppression and disillusionment that are commonplace in worlds both spherical and Disc-shaped that there’s moments where characters are practically standing in the middle of the street yelling ‘the rich will always find new ways to exploit their position for profit and influence’. I doubt anyone will be surprised to find out that I loved every single moment of this. Even better, whilst there is a lot of humour to these moments, it always remains earnest and genuine. As the story progresses and peace in the city hangs on the edge of a knife, big concepts like ‘revolution’ and ‘law’ get discussed and debated with a lot more nuance and depth than perhaps you’d expect from a comedic fantasy story.

Where Laurie's Lang was snide and full of special agent sarcasm , Sam Vimes is a man of heart and common sense; accurately described as a straight man in a world governed by curves. Had this been Game of Thrones, you’d be able to put money on him being dead in a heartbeat but not in Night Watch. Here he gets his chance to excel, be a good person, and try to bring out the best in others. He always goes out of his way to protect the weak and the innocent. After the last few years of sleazy government and ‘ultra-gritty’ adaptations, I was so happy to see a good person do well and be able to help make things a little better.

Sam Vimes might be the main character, but it’s the city of Ankh-Morpork as a whole that really steals the show. It just as vibrant and memorable as any of the individual characters who dwell within it. Pratchett’s ability to make the city feel alive gave it such a distinctive vibe that I felt in many places that I was reading the book in entirely the wrong season. This is the sort of book I could imagine reading in a wing-backed armchair in front of a roaring fire, pint in hand, on a chilly winter night.

If I had to find a fault with the book (and I really am having to try), it’s the fact that, at least in the copy I picked up, the book isn’t really split into specific chapters. One scene just flows into the next and the next and so on and so forth. As a devout bedtime reader, I do enjoy being to say ‘Oh I’ll just read one more chapter’. As it was, I had to really restrain myself from trying to read the whole thing in a couple of sittings.

It feels a little superfluous to recommend that people read Terry Pratchett. I fully appreciate that many many people have already read a lot more of the books than I and fallen head over heels for Discworld. His prose, his humour and the enormous amounts of intelligence that come through in his writing are infectiously entertaining. I had to fight very hard to resist immediately trying to buy another of his books and diving even deeper into the world. But if you’re one of those people who never quite thought it was for you, I would 100% say maybe it’s time to give it a go. Lord knows there’s far worse fantasy stories out there that are a waste of time to read (yes, I am still bitter about Orcs)

We’re sticking with fantasy for the next book but leaving Ankh-Morpork behind for a high-fantasy romp across the Mortal Realms with a rag-tag group of humans, vampires and duardin, on the hunt for some magical artefacts. Until then, happy reading!