Men At Arms by Terry Pratchett - A Review.
Gabriel
"Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had
absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for
anyone to be in a street without breaking the law."
The great Discworld city of Ankh-Morpork is ruled with the velvet
covered iron fist of the Patrician, Havelock Vetinari, but once upon a
time it was ruler by a king, strong and wise. Okay, actually he may
have been a bit of a bastard. But he was king! And the day will come
when the citizens of Ankh-Morpork will rise up to restore their
kingdom. All they need is the right man for the job.
Edward d'Eath is an Assassin and the last surviving son of a great
family that has fallen into hard times. After long hours of research,
he thinks he may have uncovered the lost heir to the throne. And when
his attempts to rouse the nobility to action fail, He decides he has
to take matters into his own hands, and so our story begins.
In Guards! Guards!, we found that the Ank-Morpork Night Watch wasn't
what it once was. It's commander, Captain Samuel Vimes, had turned to
the bottle, then the gutter. Sergent Fred Colon and Corporal Nobby
Nobbs were doing their best to stay out of trouble. But the Carrot
Ironfoundersson came along and shook them from their ennui. Now we
find a Watch that is expanding, with three new recruits joining the
ranks as part of the city's new affirmative action policies: Angua von
Überwald, Cuddy the dwarf, and Detritus the Troll. Yes, you remember
Detritus, last time we saw him he was a big shot star in Moving
Pictures. Once that crumbled, the love of his life, Ruby, insisted he
get a real job, and the best he could find was the Watch. The recruits
had better learn the ropes quickly, because somewhere in the city is a
man with a weapon like nothing they've seen before.
It seems that someone has broken into the Assassin's guild and a
weapon that should have been destroyed long ago has now been placed in
the unstable hands of a man filled with grief. As the body count
starts to rise, the Watch finds that modern policing in Ankh-Morpork
is far more dangerous than ever.
The rest of the review is available http://hubpages.com/hub/Men-At-Arms
. I hope you'll stop and look, and once again, any feedback is greatly
appreciated. Thanks