The Return of the Towers and the Fellowship of the Ordinary King

1001 Books To Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 86
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards! (Discworld Book 8)

Captain Samuel Vimes, of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, serves an institution that has outlived its purpose. An honest man in cynical times, he performs the actions of police work, knowing the city-state administration doesn’t need or respect police anymore. But deep within the city’s bowels, a movement is festering, with an eye toward overthrowing Ankh-Morpork’s ensconced hierarchy. Soon, Vimes and his men may be the only thing standing against anarchy.

Readers can enjoy this novel in two ways. First, this dry-witted satire of paperback fantasy takes the city guards, who usually exist so our muscular protagonist can kill them like redshirts, and foregrounds their story. In a genre often dominated by “great doings of great men,” author Terry Pratchett reverses the lens, retelling the story from among the people, the pedestrians whose workaday peasant lives fantasists often ignore.

Second, Pratchett directly lampoons the publishing business. In 1989, when Pratchett published this novel, three editors—Donald A. Wollheim, Lester and Judy-Lynne Del Rey, and Betty Ballantine—controlled the fantasy genre. And they largely worked from a beat sheet that Lester Del Rey derived from reading Tolkien, Terry Brooks, and Fritz Lieber. If fantasy felt repetitive in the 1970s and 1980s, that’s exactly why. Pratchett poked the publishing establishment in the eye.

Vimes, and his vestige of men, listlessly repeat the motions of the City Watch, walking the nighttime rounds and proclaiming “all’s well.” But the City Patrician has actively collaborated with the thieves and assassins, giving their guilds a legal status (a nod to Fritz Lieber’s cynical world-building). Therefore, there’s no crime for the City Watch to apprehend, since criminals are now above-board. Law, and law enforcement, have become meaningless ceremonies.

Until a massive dragon, long thought extinct, appears over the city skyline.

The Ankh-Morpork population progresses from denial to paranoia, and finally to acceptance of a world where dragons exist again. Only Vimes somehow keeps his head, managing to wrangle his City Watch comrades to investigate where the dragon came from, and who benefits from its appearance. From the depths of the city’s cesspits to the towers of the royal palace, Vimes determines to root out the truth through old-fashioned gumshoe work.

Sir Terry Pratchett

One can spot the stereotypes Pratchett satirizes. From Tolkien, he spoofs intricate world-building, through his fondness for explanatory footnotes on immaterial topics. He also mentions the restoration of the monarchy, but makes it so silly that the would-be king doesn’t even get a name. From Brooks, he spotlight’s specifically male heroism, which, in Pratchett’s world, inevitably comes to nothing. Heroes, in Ankh-Morpork, are a dime a dozen.

Ankh-Morpork is a city built entirely of shopworn genre stereotypes. Secret wizarding societies proliferate so often, it’s possible to stumble into the wrong one accidentally. Magic artifacts are so ubiquitous, they’re basically litter. Giant dragons that need slain may be extinct, but in the city’s finer quarters, one high-born aristocrat breeds their tiny cousins like champion poodles. Pratchett’s world depicts fantasy when the genre’s components have become banal.

To judge by the word count he dedicates to it, though, Pratchett plainly most enjoys the civic aspect. With assassins and thieves organized into guilds, a beloved Fritz Lieber boilerplate, politics has become the domain of backstabbers and pickpockets. Pratchett envisions a world governed by shifting alliance and skullduggery, that would make the Borgias seem listless and timid. In his luridly described prose, this terrifying edifice becomes hilarious.

Sam Vimes handles heroism diffidently. In a world flush with magic, he uncovers the truth through Poirot-like doggedness. After years on the sidelines, the City Watch must rediscover how to perform investigations. The learning curve is slow, and sometimes descends into slapstick. In the final reveal, however, these very human qualities, not the splendor of wizards or the glory of kings, make Vimes and his men heroic.

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw increasing rebellion against the genre style sheet. George R.R. Martin and Gregory Maguire thought, to resist the editors’ dominion, they needed to wallow in violence and sex, glorifying low behavior in high places. But the response, especially in mounting sequels, is cynicism and despair. Pratchett instead chose to present his rebellion through the medium of friendly teasing. The difference is palpable.

This was Pratchett’s eighth Discworld novel (of forty-one), and the first of his City Watch subseries. However, fans agree Pratchett needed several books to find his voice and the setting’s message. This novel makes a good entry point for genre fans and newbies alike, and Pratchett’s voice rings like an old friend.

Reviewer's note: Part 86 of my 1001 Books series used to be Pratchett's novel with Neil Gaiman, Good Omens. In light of the revelation of Gaiman's crimes, I no longer count that book on the list, and hereby completely replace it with this one.