Welcome back to the Terry Pratchett Book Club! We’re returned from an extended end-of-year/beginning-of-year hiatus, and ready to delve into Men at Arms.
Summary
Carrot writes a letter to his family: He has been made a corporal in the Watch and there are many new recruits meant to reflect the city’s diversity. Vimes is leaving the Watch to get married, so they’re not sure who the new captain will be. Meanwhile, Edward d’Eath, assassin and son of a once-wealthy family, has decided that the reasons for all his troubles could be fixed if Ankh-Morpork returned to its past; a chance encounter with Carrot makes him believe this is possible because he is certain that Carrot is their king. He makes a presentation to a collection of city nobles, who are by no means convinced or interested, but d’Eath is adamant that something must be done to bring Carrot to his rightful place. Sam Vimes goes to see Vetinari about who will replace him as captain now that he’s getting married and retiring. The Watch currently has three new “affirmative action” recruits—Detritus the troll, Cuddy the dwarf, and Angua (who Carrot believes has been hired because she’s a woman). He’s busy showing Angua the ropes during the Day Watch when they catch an unlicensed thief, Here’n’now. Elsewhere, Edward d’Eath kills a clown named Beano.
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The Starless Crown
Sam goes to the mansion to see Sybil, who makes certain he’ll be available for the dinner she’s hosting to help get him connected to powerful people. She also tells him to be on the lookout for a dragon named Chubby, who she rescued from a blacksmith. (Sibyl doesn’t know that Chubby was stolen.) Colon, Nobby, and Carrot are outfitting the new recruits; Carrot has them take their oath. There are separate marches among the troll and dwarf population of the city that day, and the groups will run right into each other (and hate each other), so the Watch has to be on hand for what is sure to be a riot. Colon sends Carrot out to meet them before a fight breaks out, but Carrot brings Cuddy and Detritus with him, who begin to fight while he’s trying to calm things down. Carrot calls for a salute, which leads to Detritus saluting while he’s holding Cuddy, knocking them both unconscious. Carrot proceeds to tell the dwarfs off and make them drop their weapons. Then he sends the trolls off as well. And then there’s an explosion.
Vimes is thinking about his impending marriage and his previous captain, who retired but promptly came back to tend the guard until he died. He goes to meet with Mr. Morecombe, the Ramkin family solicitor (who is a vampire), and he tells Sam that Sybil will be giving him control over all of her money and property in a somewhat old-fashioned move… and she owns a tenth of the city. He’s sitting stunned at his desk when the explosion happens, and looks out the window to see smoke at the Assassins’ Guild. The Watch converge on the guild’s building, and Angua makes friends with Gaspode the talking dog (because she’s a werewolf). Sam asks Dr. Cruces, the Master of Assassins, what happened; when the fellow suggests he has no right to that information, the letter from Sybil’s lawyer makes the man think otherwise. Cruces claims it was just fireworks that exploded. Gaspode tells Angua that it was a dragon that exploded. The Watch leaves and Cruces demands that the premises are searched, and goes to tell the Patrician about what’s happened. The Watch begin to put together what they noticed, as d’Eath looks upon his stolen item from he Guild…
Vimes is on patrol with Carrot. They talk about the problem with kings, and then find (due to Gaspode) Chubby’s collar on a gargoyle, confirming that it was a dragon that blew up at the Guild. Cruces tells Vetinari about the stolen item from the Guild, and asks him to keep Vimes out of this business, which the Patrician agrees too. A dwarf named Bjorn Hammerhock is murdered. Vimes and Carrot ask Sibyl about how Chubby might have died; they figure out that a mirror was used to frighten the dragon into defending itself against another male dragon. Colon tries to train the recruits and winds up insulting them for fighting amongst themselves and having difficulty with the equipment. He walks off, and Angua suggests that the three of them go get a drink together, which results in their coming across Hammerhock’s body. Vimes goes to tell Vetinari, who informs him that he is to stop investigating the Guild theft, and that the Day Watch commander, Mayonnaise Quirke, has jurisdiction over Hammerhock’s case. The Watch is drinking at The Bucket, thinking about Hammerhock’s death and how they need to do something about it. They find a card pinned to Colon’s shoe that reads “GONNE.” Carrot decides he’ll bring it to Vimes, but asks to escort Angua home on the way.
Commentary
We’re back with the City Watch for the first time since Guards! Guards! and damn if this book doesn’t just hit the ground running. Part of that is just plain experience, given that this is the fifteenth Discworld novel, and the other part is undoubtedly down to the police procedural style, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for messing about: You’ve got a crime to solve, and it needs to pop up in short order. We get a lot of references right off the bat, mostly to Hill Street Blues and Columbo, which is an excellent place to start. (It’s a relief that the story follows those types of shows more than, say, Law & Order.)
I’ve read that folks got aggravated with this book’s original cover, believing that some of the details gave away the plot. It seems that Pratchett was unbothered by it due to the procedural format, since watching the investigator piece together what happened is really what those stories are about, far more than the mystery of who did what. I would argue that the entire book functions that way, really—there’s a lot of setup that you can probably guess the outcome to, but that doesn’t make it less enjoyable. Cuddy and Detritus’ animosity is a great example of this, as is Vimes’ growing unease at the thought of leaving his job.
Despite Edward d’Eath being a pretty canned villain for the start of the book, I’m always impressed by how well the narration unspools him to us and makes him interesting for as long as he needs to be. For instance, this time around I got real stuck on “He’s just retreated, as people do when they feel under attack, to a more defensible position, i.e. the past” because… d’Eath is using this idea differently, but it applies to people everywhere, particularly toward the back-in-my-day lot. There are so many who use the past as a cudgel when they are faced with changes that they don’t like in the world.
This book contains the infamous Sam Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness aside, which notably just led to the Pratchett Estate approving the use of Vimes’s name in creation of a price index that monitors cost inflation. It pairs down to one line in particular, being: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.” This is true, and has been illustrated in numerous ways by very astute folks who are much better at economics than myself. But there is one piece that sticks out to me personally, being the sort of person who occasionally goes down internet rabbit holes about fashion history: Sybil wears her mother’s rubber boots and tweed skirt.
For reasons I still haven’t quite figured out (that’s a lie, the reason is that I have ADHD, and this happens a lot), I once spent a whole day looking into the history of American “sportswear.” Not the athleisure sort, but the post-WWII chinos-and-sportcoat variety. And one of the things about this era that fascinated me—you were considered more fashionable if you were wearing your father’s jacket. Having an item of clothing that was well-made enough to still be wearable and passed down was part of the pride and the look itself. So you see, the point isn’t just that Sybil can afford to spend less, but also that she can presumably do these things and still be considered a lady, still be fashionable in her own right. Her mother’s rubber boots and tweed skirt probably look fabulous, even if she doesn’t care much about that sort of thing.
I also have a soft spot for Vimes’ rant to Carrot about kings, making the most concise argument possible against a monarchy as a general system of governorship—being that, even if you got lucky and had a benevolent ruler, one day down that line, someone wouldn’t be so nice. There are plenty of other reasons that dispensing with monarchy is a wise idea, but this is honestly the easiest and simplest way to break it down. The gorgeous irony is that he is making said argument to a “rightful” king… but Carrot never did care much about those sorts of things.
Asides and little thoughts:
- Obviously, Cuddy has a glass eye like Columbo, which means that I always picture him as Peter Falk with a big dwarf beard. Can’t say I’m too upset about that.
- There is more than one wink-nudge aside about Angua’s ample assets, and as a person of formerly large breasts (I had them removed), can I just say… it doesn’t work for me. They’re annoying, but not for the reason cis men generally assume, and it makes the comedy fall flat. You can wear a flat chest plate even with big boobs because you wear padding with armor. They don’t really get in the way that badly when drawing a bow. (And yes, speaking from experience to both.) If you want to make jokes about boobs, there are much funnier things to note about how the particularly well-endowed treat them.
- Given that the Slow Comfortable Double-Entendre with Lemonade is a play on the cocktail known as A Slow Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall, I find myself wanting to come up with the Discworld recipe for the drink using the same naming conventions this is built on. (What are the Disc versions of Sloe Gin and SoCo, for example?)
Pratchettisms:
Individuals aren’t naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which humans being constantly remind one another that they are… well… human beings.
He could think in italics. Such people need watching.
In a million universes, this was a very short book.
Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.
He’d like to take this moment and press it carefully in a big book, so that when he was old he could take it out occasionally and remember it.
If the Creator had said, “Let there be light!” in Ankh-Morpork, he’d have got no further because of all the people saying “What color?”
Everyone nodded gloomily, including the little bugger and the bigger little bugger by adoption.
Next week we’ll read up to “You owe—hey, you owe me for three rats!”
I love this one.
Carrot is indeed the Rightful King of ankh Morpork. He decidesdes being a good copper is the best way to bring peace and justice to his people.
Vetinari is a bit to clever and pays for it.
Cuddy and Detritus bond.
I love this book so much, but have never thought about why I do, given that I’m not particularly into police procedurals, etc. I think that it’s partly the tightness of the plotting, but also the glorious cynicism of Vimes balanced against Carrot’s cast iron innocence. The dynamic of the Watch team is balanced so nicely, as well, as the diverse members come together and all contribute something to the narrative.
That’s a really interesting point about inherited clothes being *more* fashionable at one point in time, and something that I hadn’t realised had persisted into the 20th century. It’s an attitude that very much pre-dates fast fashion and a level of consumerism that values novelty over quality. Of course, you need to have a certain level of income to inherit clothes that are good enough quality fabric and construction and haven’t been worn to bits by their original owner, as well.
I have no experience with armour, although I do with both large boobs and archery, which I have also never found to interfere with each other
Your opening sentence should have read “Carrot, writes a letter to, his family“.
I hadn’t thought of this as a procedural even with the Watch involved, possibly because there’s more going on; OTOH, it’s more like a procedural than it is like a Hiassen novel (which Pratchett liked), even though it has some of the feel of one.
@2: Of course, you need to have a certain level of income to inherit clothes that are good enough quality fabric and construction and haven’t been worn to bits by their original owner, as well. IIUC, that’s the point.
wrt archery, it depends IME on how you’re taught and what with; longbows can require drawing very close across the chest, and the latest student I’ve seen with a good instructor-of-novices needed a little help to avoid snagging herself with a 5-foot recurve despite being relatively lean.
More Pratchettisms:
His seniors described him as a man to watch–and, because there was something about him that made even Assassins uneasy, preferably from a long way away.
The problem with Destiny, of course, is that she is often not careful about where she puts her finger.
The river slunk sullenly in its bed, like a student around 11 A.M.
Eat dragons, it proclaims, and you’ll have a case of indigestion to which the term “blast radius” will be appropriate. Pratchett is often noted for bits pulling in the physical sciences, but this is a neat bit of biology — cf the monarch butterfly.
Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.
This is because if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no one would ever get anything done. Mark Twain might have argued with this, considering his description of how acute riverboat pilots have to be.
The moon would be up soon. That was one trouble with cities. The damn thing could be lurking behind a tower if you weren’t careful.
I feel like the designers of programmed obsolescence are seeking to undermine the Boots Theory by making even expensive things less durable. Take smartphones. Even a good one falters after a few years of hard use, and then the available model is costlier and sometimes *less* durable (when made of stylish glass instead of plastic) and you have to buy a new protective case that fits its precise shape. Grr.
“Very thin-skinned, your basic ethnic.” That’s too real, as a thing bigots say, in reference to people of any marginalized group considered “oversensitive” in reacting to the large and small aggressions they experience every day. Ugh.
The new-recruit training sessions sound like a dramatic version of real-world dynamics when someone who claims they “don’t see” race/gender/other demographics treats everyone “equally” without regard to the ways these differences can affect peoples’ needs, abilities, and experiences.
I like the bit where Vimes and Carrot debate the proper feminization of “honcho” for a queen.
Speaking of boob jokes, the maker of Edward’s slideshow was apparently directed to include the “bust” of a certain queen…and the resulting image elicits the comment that “more of her face” would have been preferable.
Pratchettisms:
‘The Ramkins were more highly-bred than a hilltop bakery’
‘Many great landscape gardeners had gone down in history and had been remembered in a very solid way by the magnificent parks and gardens they designed with almost godlike power and foresight, thinking nothing of making lakes and shifting held at planting woodlands to enable future generations to appreciate the sublime beauty of wild nature transformed by man..’
‘Very slowly, like a mighty sequoia beginning the first step towards resurrection as a million Save the Trees leaflets, Detritus toppled backward with his mug still in his hand.’
Call-back:
Carrot thinks “ethnic makeup” refers to the dwarf Grabpot Thundergust’s cosmetics factory — which supplied Tomjon and Co. with makeup in Wyrd Sisters. (I think it’s important later in this book, but I don’t remember for certain.)
Looking ahead:
Via this double protest, we’re introduced to the Battle of Koom Valley — and the long disagreement about it — between dwarfs and trolls.
“The post office. My grandad said that once you could post a letter there and it would be delivered within a month without fail. You didn’t have to give it to a passing dwarf and hope the little bugger wouldn’t eat it before…” (TV Tropes claims the “glom of nit” sign is “probably one of the most extreme Brick Jokes ever written.”),
“Bows aren’t troll weapon.” Soon they will be.
Morecombe mentions the possibility of Vimes and Sybil having children.
Leonard of Quirm, not named on-page yet, makes his debut.
Thoughts on:
Edward d’Eath – I love assassins who scare other assassins. d’Eath, reminds me of Jonathan Teatime from Hogfather (and I watched the live action movie The Hogfather over our break and I can’t recommend it more strongly. It is near perfect. I won’t spoil it, but for those acquainted with Hex, watch for the Intel Inside logo changed to Anthill Inside.
Boobs, armor, and archery – I think the armor thing derives from comic books, where females have armor with, essentially, a metal bra over their boobs. The archery thing dates back to myths about the Amazons where they cut off a breast to let them shoot bows.
Boots (not to be confused with boobs) – Good boots (or other pieces of men’s and some women’s clothing) can be repaired. A good shoe (I don’t do boots) can be reheeled (because the heel is separate from the sole) and after more wear can be resoled. The problem with handling them down through generations is sizing (which Terry occasionally comments on). Nowadays the only reused family clothing I can think of is the wedding dress but quality vintage clothing stores do exist.
Monarchy – Terry, and most of his good characters, are firmly against monarchy in all its forms. Vimes’ dealings with it are the most detailed and interesting. As we’ve seen in the Witches books, an hereditary king would not necessarily be a good king (and may, like Carrot, try to avoid it) and a good king like Verence II might not be an effective king.
Pride and Prejudice – Terry, here and in later books, really nails this. His characters have pride in their race, tribe, country, city, occupation, or even street and Vimes is no exception. Neither is Carrot. The problem is when you allow your pride to become prejudice, i.e. to pre judge others. Learning to avoid this is part of the arcs of many of his characters. Only Carrot seems to have no prejudice. Vimes has it but recognizes it, possibly based on his views on privilege (i.e. private law). He is annoyed by Vetinari’s equal representation push but strives not to be prejudiced.
@5: “shifting held at” is supposed to be “shifting hills and”…darn late-night use of dictation software.
Where is it mentioned/hinted at that Angua is a werewolf? I missed it.
@8: It’s not made explicit at this point in the book, but we’ve gotten the line about the problem of city buildings unpredictably concealing the moon, plus her “barked” inquiry to Gaspode before he started talking human to her and said he could smell what she was from a mile off.
@8 – Also keep in mind that Vetinari is interested in adding different races to the Wstch. You’ll have to wait to see how it impacts this book.
BTW, I love that my favorite character, Gaspode, is back.
wrt Angua, Pratchett is definitely playing with the reader; I can’t remember whether I caught on before the reveal, back when I first read this (about a quarter-century ago…). ISTR we had a werewolf in one of the earlier works, so it’s not as if we weren’t warned they existed.
There were Lupine and Ludmilla in Reaper Man. But they’re different types of werewolf than Angua, who’s sometimes called a “classic bimorph” or “true bimorph” and can change her shape at will (except in moonlight or a silver collar) while they cannot.
I learned about Angua before I read Men at Arms, so I didn’t experience the realization of her implied species and don’t know if I would have figured it out before it was explicit. For Mark Oshiro, the penny dropped in the middle of that line about the hidden moon.
@6: Even Carrot exhibits prejudice at one point in this book. He says the following about the undead:
Sometimes a “vintage” look comes back into fashion, although that’s usually clothes from charity shops (thrift stores) rather than hand-me-downs. (My mum recently made a bundle selling off some of her old 1970’s and 80’s clothes).
I guess this might be related to the fashion for ‘stonewashed’ jeans etc. where brand new clothes are distressed to look as if they’ve been worn for a long time.
I didn’t realize Plato existed in Discworld
Also, A Slow Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall
Should I ask what makes up that Cocktail?