{"id":194,"date":"2003-01-15T21:55:06","date_gmt":"2003-01-16T02:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=194"},"modified":"2003-01-15T21:55:06","modified_gmt":"2003-01-16T02:55:06","slug":"pratchett_terry_7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2003\/01\/pratchett_terry_7\/","title":{"rendered":"Pratchett, Terry: (15) Men At Arms"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Several nights ago, I picked up Men at Arms<\/cite>, by Terry Pratchett<\/strong>, because I didn’t want to start reading The Paths of the Dead<\/cite> before bed (for fear that I would be up all night reading the whole thing. This turned out to be a good decision.). I’ve been done with the book for a while, but the last few nights, my time has been taken up with computer issues instead. (My new port replicator hates the USB card I wanted to put in it. Grr.)<\/p>\n

Men at Arms<\/cite> is the second book in the Guards sub-series of the Discworld books, after Guards! Guards!<\/cite><\/a>. Most of the book is styled as a police procedural, as a series of unusual killings puzzles the Watch and sparks ethnic (dwarf-troll) tensions in the city. This part of the book is really enjoyable; I love the interactions between the new members of the Watch, particularly Detritus and Cuddy, and it’s always fun watching Vimes and Carrot policing. However, I think the book bungles the semi-MacGuffin by being about as subtle as a sledgehammer—not that the Discworld books are generally<\/em> known for being subtle, but this is bad in a Real World political kind of way, which makes it even more strident. There are lovely moments in this book, and I really like it if I skip over those few pages here and there.<\/p>\n

As an aside, I’ve been trying to see why I thought that the Patrician was considerably older than portrayed in Night Watch<\/cite>. Here’s one reason: he’s described as limping and hobbling during his end-of-book conversation with Carrot (which, by the way, is a great conversation). I know, you were all losing sleep over that one . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several nights ago, I picked up Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett, because I didn’t want to start reading The Paths of the Dead before bed (for fear that I would be up all night reading the whole thing. This turned out to be a good decision.). I’ve been done with the book for a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Pratchett, Terry: (15) Men At Arms”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,64,15],"tags":[350],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-discworld","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-pratchett-terry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}