Men At Arms: (Discworld Novel 15) (Discworld series)

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The Post Office is apparently just as terrified of Mrs. Cake as Ankh-Morpork's various priesthoods.

Death Glare: Mr Cheese the bartender insists that a drunken Vimes has to pay his bar bill. Angua and Carrot merely look at Cheese and he immediately changes his mind. Apothecary Alligator: The billiards lab in the Alchemist's Guild features a stuffed one in the corner, seemingly for no reason.

This book came out one year after Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins premiered in London, and I find myself wondering if Pratchett saw it because a sizable portion of the show centers on this issue, particularly the aptly named “The Gun Song”:

Beware the Nice Ones: This is the first book to insinuate that there may be just a little something more to Carrot's personality than meets the eye. See also Just Between You and Me below. Corporal Carrot has been promoted and is now in charge of the new recruits guarding Ankh-Morpork from Barbarian Tribes, Miscellaneous Marauders, unlicensed Thieves, and other dangerous Discworld denizens. It’s a big job for an adopted dwarf keeping the likes of young coppers Lance-constable Cuddy (really a dwarf), Lance-constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-constable Angua (a woman) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving) in line.Vetinari seems to be considerably off his game throughout this story. Whether he actually is or not is never directly specified, though tantalising inferences can be made by reading Feet of Clay. Sacrificial Lion: Cuddy, who seemed on his way to become a major character like Detritus and Angua. Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.” Sam Vimes is set to leave the Watch after his impending nuptials to Lady Sybil Ramkin, the noblest and richest woman in Ankh-Morpork ( “The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.”). All while the Watch expands and diversifies - now they employ a troll, a dwarf, and a w- .... ummm, let’s just say a woman - while a string of suspicious murders with a strange new weapon eventually known as a gonne occur - and ethnic tensions between dwarfs and trolls intensify, including in the Watch, and someone needs to sort it all out. Born Terence David John Pratchett, Sir Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was thirteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe. It is revealed that d'Eath has stolen the gonne, the Disc's first and only handheld firearm, from the Assassins' Guild, with the intention of discrediting Vetinari's government through the murders. Any possessor of the gonne seems to become obsessed with the device. After d'Eath reveals his plan to Dr. Cruces, head of the Assassin's Guild, Cruces murders him and takes up the plan himself. The Watch prevent Cruces from killing Vetinari, but Cuddy and Angua are killed in the process. Vimes and Carrot confront and disarm Cruces, and Carrot helps Vimes resist the gonne's allure. Cruces gives Carrot the evidence that he is the royal heir, upon which Carrot kills Cruces with his sword and has both the evidence and the dismantled gonne buried with Cuddy. As a werewolf can only be killed with a silver weapon, Angua is revived upon the moon's rising.

I guess the reason I liked Men at Arms was that balance. It was funny—and not in a cheap way either. It was funny in a clever, scholarly, satire sort of way, with an occasional bad pun or lowbrow shot to keep you on your toes. But, somehow, Pratchett still managed to make me care a great deal about his characters. (Thereby stealing my great, wonderfully original idea for the ALCATRAZ books—that of giving people character arcs.)In the New Statesman, Marc Burrows hypothesized Pratchett drew inspiration from Robert Tressell's 1914 novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. [5] In the book Fashion in the Fairy Tale Tradition, Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario argued "shoes and economic autonomy are inexorably linked" in fairy tales, citing the Boots' theory as "particularly relevant" and "an insightful metaphor for inequality". [6] Examples [ edit ]