The 306 Greatest Books #172 - Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. The book can be found on the BBC and My Book Lists.

Night Watch is the 29th book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, with several other books having also made it onto the BBC 100 Greatest Books list including The Colour Magic, Mort, and Guards! Guards! Having started the first book of the series (The Colour Magic) I have slowly been working my way through all of them so that I could read them in release order, having finally gotten to Night Watch. Throughout the first 29 books (totaling more than 40 in the series), there have been multiple story lines that have appeared with many of the books having absolutely nothing to do with any of the other books except that the location was on the Discworld. Of these varying storylines, Night Watch is the 6th book focusing on the Night Watch, a series of books that began with Guards! Guards!. Having read them all (up until this point) I can say that the Night Watch novels have not been my favorite of the bunch, but they have generally been enjoyable. This book, however, was quite different from all of the preceding stories. Generally the books are about the Watch as a whole, led by Commander Vimes, with many other Watchmen included in the mix. The number of different Watchmen slowly increasing over the course of the series. And while you don't need to read the entire series to understand and enjoy the books, it definitely does help when character names are mentioned and previous plot points pop up here or there. In fact this entire story starts with the murder of a Watchman (off screen), which we had known from quite a few of the previous stories. We are quickly time traveling with Vimes (through the use of magic) to back when he was a young recruit in the Watch and his history takes an interesting turn. Although my feelings on the Watch novels are generally so-so, this one felt so different from the others that I did greatly enjoy it. It was new and fresh but with many of the same characters we had seen introduced in a wide array of the previous books. And although the Discworld books are generally satirical, I felt that this one was more serious in nature. Pratchett's writing is still spot on and hilarious at times but I felt he was more going for a serious narrative and one that he hit amazingly well. This is likely one of the best of the Discworld books and one I would definitely recommend. I feel that even if you were to read this book without all the backstory from the other books there isn't much you would be missing. Highly recommend.