I mean, if anyone (who wasn’t a wizard) was going to time travel, it was always going to be Sam Vimes.
Summary
Vimes learns from the latest assassin in the garden that he’s off the Assassin’s Guild registry entirely (she’s just a practicing student), and finds that off-putting. He then smells lilacs and remembers what day it is. Sybil is in the process of giving birth to their child, and he is off in his ducal uniform to the Watch Committee. When he gets to the Yard he finds out that Carcer has killed another cop, Sargeant Stronginthearm. Vimes puts off his meeting, writes the letter to his parents, and has a chat with Igor, who doesn’t much like that he wasn’t permitted to piece the dwarf back together and get him “up and running” again. Everyone is asking about Sybil and worried about her age. Colon and Nobby head to the cemetery of the Small Gods and look at several important graves, one specifically for John Keel. Vimes and Carrot make it to Vetinari’s office—the committee has been dismissed given the date and events of the day—only to have a message show up via the clacks that Carcer has been found. Vimes arrives on the scene and Cheery fills him in on how she’s created a perimeter, but Carcer has gone up high. Vimes wants him flushed down because he’s got a crossbow that he’s liable to start taking potshots with.
Buy the Book
The Saint of Bright Doors
Vimes has Detritus fire Old Tom as a warning shot, and tells Cheery that he’s going up to arrest Carcer. When he gets up there, he sees the signal indicating an officer in trouble—Carrot is getting into position at the High Energy Magic building and just the most conspicuous person alive. Vimes gets Carcer’s attention to prevent Carrot from being shot, and a huge storm begins. Vimes manages to catch Carcer on the university Library dome, knowing he’s got two knives on him, and he asks Detritus to get more officers on the dome to make sure they take him in carefully. It turns out that Carcer has three knives and something strange is happening with the weather. A lot of wild things happen across the city, and Ponder and Ridcully are pulled into the Watch’s aid to figure out what the storm has done, though Ponder thinks that with the Library in play, it’s possible that Vimes and Carcer have been displaced in time and space. Vimes wakes up with Rosie and Doctor Lawn; he was slashed across the eye and stripped of his armor in the Shades. The duo extort him for their help and Vimes heads back to the Yard to find no Watch there. Then he heads home to find a sixteen-year-old Sybil. He realizes he’s been thrown into the past and gives his name as John Keel.
Vimes tries to get into the University to fix the screwup, but it’s past curfew and he’s brought in by three Watchmen after trying to take them to task for policing wrong. He wakes up in a cell next to Carcer, who is promptly let go since he was only out after curfew. He’s brought to Captain Tilden and told that he can’t be John Keel because Keel is dead. Then he’s knocked out once more and when he comes to, he’s talking to Lu-Tze, who tells him that he can’t really explain everything to him… but he must. They’re in something of a paradox because the real Keel was killed by Carcer—he was supposed to stop an attempted mugging when he got to town, but there were three muggers instead of two this time. In a funny turn of events, Vimes now looks very similar to Keel (the scar and eye patch), and Lu-Tze can give Vimes a small period of time to catch Carcer and teach the young version of Sam Vimes what Keel originally taught him—how to be a good copper. Otherwise, the future is going to turn out very differently indeed. Lu-Tze gives Vimes time to mull it over, and talks to Qu, who says he can only hold this strange present in place for four days before they have to send Vimes back.
Vimes realize that he doesn’t have a choice and agrees to the mission, though he reminds Lu-Tze that he knows what day it is, and what will happen. He’s put back into events, tells Tilden that he is Keel and his papers were stolen, gives the references that he knows the man in Pseudopolis sent about him, then tells the captain that he wants more money, the rank of sergeant-at-arms, and his first month’s pay upfront. Tilden is mesmerized and swears him in on the spot. Vimes tasks Snouty the cell guard with getting him good gear and heads to Doctor Lawn’s in Twinkle Street. He remembers this era when the paranoid Lord Winder was in charge and his Particulars (who have a preferred name of Unmentionables) spied everywhere as a sort of secondary police force. He gets his room from Lawn and wakes up to all the items he requested. He speaks briefly to Doctor Lawn to get the measure of him, then heads to Treacle Mine Road to sit at the sergeant’s desk and thoroughly shake up the Night Watch. He tells them they’re not to take bribes anymore, or steal from the horse’s food, and that they have to get receipts for prisoners they bring to the Unmentionables. Then he fires Corporal Quirke, asks Sergeant Knock about who they should promote, and takes his younger self out for a walk.
Commentary
This book is such a stupidly easy sell for me on every front. Love a time travel story. Love a past event that you get to revisit through a different lens. Love weird closed loops and ticking clocks. Love becoming people in your own past who Taught You Everything You Know.
And I particularly love the rarity that is the story where a person starts by looking back on the past, and wistfully thinking better of the person that they used to be! And the way things were! And how much of that old self they’ve lost! Who then gets to experience the way things were and gets a thorough reminder that it wasn’t as great that they’re remembering.
Obviously there’s some fun for Vimes in getting to be his old sergeant, to shake things up, to give himself all the advice that he remembers being so essential to his formation. But the fact that he arrives in the past and immediately wishes for his good warm coat… Look, some comforts are not things that you should give up, for any measure of nostalgia, and being warm is one of them. More to the point, Sam Vimes isn’t that kid who pounded the streets anymore, and while the class issues that his marriage keep bringing up in his mind are certainly complex and screwy (and never going away), he should absolutely learn a little more appreciation for how good he has it as Sybil’s husband.
It’s understandable that Sam Vimes will never be comfortable being a nobleman—I’m with him on that—but there’s nothing wrong with having people at home who care for you, with life changing over time, with not spending most of your days physically suffering just because it’s what you’re accustomed to. It’s the Sam Vimes version of nobility: being cold, wet, and miserable, but at least your boots tell you what street you’re on. It’s just a different version of women in the Shades having “Standards,” and Vimes sees through that completely, but never clocks the impulse in himself because it’s not about cleaning the stoop or painting the shutters.
I do have to take a moment to call out the Les Misérables parallels that run through the story, mostly because they’re more subtly planted here than we’ve seen in other Discworld books, and I assume it’s down to this book being a little heavier on the subject matter front? Of course, it’s possible that it’s more intended to recount the actual historical events that Les Mis is cataloguing, but there are a few very specific twists in this one that make me assume it’s Les Mis for sure. (Which, I have to admit, is another musical that I’m less keen on. My kingdom for a Discworld book that used Little Shop of Horrors as inspiration.)
Not sure how I feel about the characterization of Carcer in that it feels a little… neat? to create a serial killer who just happens to want to kill all the cops? But I’ll see how it strikes me as we continue this time around.
Asides and little thoughts:
- Vimes’ issues with the plumes and tights of the old fancy dress uniform not looking “male” demands a comment around the fact that gendered fashions change up so frequently and wildly that we often forget that what is deemed masculine or feminine alters significantly over time. High heels were initially made to highlight men’s calves; there have been periods and areas of the world where skirts and makeup were commonly worn by men; blue and pink as baby colors used to be swapped (and before that, all baby garments were the same and not designed to denote gender at all).
- “It was gilt by association.” I am very particular about my puns, and this one is absolutely tops, so I’m making a note.
- Sybil doesn’t want Vimes around for the birth of their kid, and while I’m usually not a fan of that choice when it’s couched in such gender-essentialist terms, in this case I’m like… yeah, girl. You’re right. He is not the guy you want in the room for that. Hell, I’d have Nobby in the room over Vimes. I’d have Vetinari in the room over Vimes.
- And technically Vetinari is in the room, given that Vimes asks him how Sybil is doing, and he has an answer for him. I can’t with the three of them, they need to stop.
- Saying that Vimes isn’t comfortable around horses because he’s “one of nature’s pedestrians,” honestly, why don’t I use that one more often? It’s as useful as it is evocative.
Pratchettisms:
Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart.
Among the city’s bone orchards the cemetery was the equivalent of the drawer marked misc, where people were interred in the glorious expectation of nothing very much.
Cursing, and shielding his face with his arms, and hammered all the time by shattering crystal balls, each one predicting a future of pain, he skidded and slid across the rolling ice.
“Haha” didn’t come close to doing it the injustice it deserved. It was more a sort of modulation to the voice, an irritatingly patronizing chortle that suggested that all this was somehow funny and you hadn’t got the joke.
Ponder and Ridcully waited a few moments, but the city stayed full of normal noise, like the collapse of masonry and distant screams.
A large blob of foam, which up until that point had been performing sterling service in the cause of essential decencies, slipped slowly to the floor.
The cluttered desk of Vimes’s memory finally unearthed the inadvertent coffee mat of recollection from under the teacup of forgetfulness.
It was going to be a corny line, but some things you had to know.
Sweeper gave him a long, thoughtful look. “Y’know,” he said, “it’s very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is.”
His glare ran from face to face, causing most of the squad to do an immediate impression of the Floorboard and Ceiling Inspectors Synchronized Observation Team.
Next week we’ll read up to:
“Madame doesn’t like waiting, dearie,” were the last words he heard before night closed in all the way.
I always loved the way that the start of this book overlapped with, and crossed over with, Thief of Time :)
And look… By this point, Lu Tze is basically The Doctor, right? He has so many of the mannerisms and characteristics down pat… lol
Thoughts
We begin at the end. Is there such a thing as backshadowing? Sybil is about to give birth to a new Sam Vimes and the original gang is gathered at the cemetery. Soon we are plunged into Vimes’ (and Carcer’s) past to see how it all began. Thank heaven for Lu-Tze.
Homicidal Lord Winder is the Patrician and we hear of his Cable Street Particulars secret police force. Vimes, posing as Sgt Keel, begins to whip the Night Watch into shape, including his younger self Lance Cpl Sam Vimes (who also exists because of quantum, according to Lu-Tze) and Cpl Colon.
Pratchettisms
He’d always looked at it [assassination] as some kind of a vote of confidence. It showed that he was annoying the rich and arrogant people who ought to be annoyed. (Vimes)
It was gilt by association. (Vimes) (I know Emmet flagged it but it’s one of the best puns in all of the books)
Thunder … rolled. It was the roll of a giant iron cube down the stairways of the gods, a crackling, thudding crash that tore the sky in half and shook the building.
“Hat = wizard, wizard = hat. Everything else is frippery.” (a naked Ridcully)
The man was standing very close to the bars, with the grin of one who mistakenly thinks he’s a wit when he’s only half of one. (Vimes)
Vimes found it better to look to Authority for orders and then filter those orders through a fine mesh of common sense, adding a generous scoop of misunderstanding and maybe even incipient deafness if circumstances demanded, because Authority rarely descended to the street level.
This book is quite different from the previous Sam Vimes stories, I feel. It is hard for me to describe, but maybe that results from the fact that Thief of Time was the first Discworld novel I ever read. So my entry experience to Pratchett’s world and character building was a very advanced one in terms of maturity. Getting back to that Point – with Lu Tse appearing again, one of my favorite characters – probably causes something to resonate in me.
I deeply love Sam Vimes, especially since Pratchett does not make him a naturally born saint but rather keeps describing his struggle and his inner demons. He is a constant reminder that justice the way it ought to be dealt out does not come free for anybody. While clearly pointing out the downsides of having police powers and authority in the wrong hands, he makes it just as clear how hard it is not to fall to such ways in the daily confrontation with lesser and bigger evildoers. It takes an effort, almost all of the time.
We get all the clichés about the current Watch being a sorry excuse for a police force — and then we go back 30 years and realize how far they’ve progressed.
I’m not getting much of a Les Mis vibe yet, but I can see the story going there — especially with the hints of a major upset coming. But my more immediate reaction was this being the mirror image of Time After Time, which I think Pratchett has considerably improved on: Steenburgen’s whine repelled me the first time I saw the movie and has curdled in memory. Vimes (having already been a copper in Ankh-Morpork when this story happens) remembers lots of things and so is not nearly as far out to sea as Wells was (or the Enterprise‘s crew in Star Trek IV), but he can still be caught out — especially when he overestimates himself.
I’ve never run into “jody” as a name for the chants/songs that feature in every movie with military training; count me among the 10,000. The etymology is … interesting.
One Pratchettism:
Policemen, after a few years, found it hard enough to believe in people, let alone anyone they couldn’t see.
This is my favorite Discworld book, to the point that I have Reg’s gravestone tattooed on my chest. I’m glad I happened to run across this just now.
He wanyto kill almost everyone; he’s a villain in the style of Mr. Teatime, or the Joker: he just likes killing people. He doesn’t like being arrested, so he reflexively kills anyone he knows to be a cop, but he’ll kill pretty much anyone if they annoy him or have something he wants or happen to be nearby when he feels like killing someone.
To save others some looking up, Joe D/De/The Grinder(Grinder=Seducer) is a character in assorted blues songs who makes time with the girlfriends of men who are in prison or at war. The modern call-and-response military cadences come directly from African-American Blues, Gospel, and precursor traditions. As do sea-chanties, incidentally, transmitted via the cotton and tobacco ports.
PS: “gilt by association” is ~ancient; ISTR Spider Robinson using it half a century ago in reference to the recording achievements of a certain sunshine pop group.
This and Hogfather are tied for my favorite Discworld book.
I believe this is the only Discworld book that made me cry. Sam and Sybil’s exchange at the end is gold. I’m paraphrasing because I don’t have the book in front of me.
”We’re naming him Sam, Sam, and that’s an end to it.”
and then Sam’s joyous:
”I’ll teach him to walk!”
It made me so happy that Sam finally got what he deserves in his life.
I’ve always thought of this as the best Pratchett book, period (it’s the book I give people to get them hooked on Pratchett). I got a chance to ask him in person why it was so different from most of his other books and his answer was, simply, “I was just firing on all cylinders for that one.”
This is also one of my favorite books about my favorite characters. I think the reason is that it is, in a sense, multiple origin stories. We learn more of not just who they are but how they got to be who they are.
We get glimpses of other current characters as they were then. We also learn how Ankh-Morpork has changed over the years. And we see the rise of some of the guilds.
It’s beyond a heartwarming story. It’s a heart-filling story.
@@.-@
The Les Mis parallels don’t show up until things get political. There’s no Valjean or Cosette equivalents to engage in all the crime and redemption business before getting to the barricades
I agree with 9 that this is the best Pratchett book (or at least the best Discworld book) but it leans so much on knowledge of the established characters – Sybil, Vimes, Vetinari – that I wouldn’t use it as an introduction to the series. Seeing young Sam, young Vetinari etc is so much more satisfying when you know them already.
The modern call-and-response military cadences come directly from African-American Blues, Gospel, and precursor traditions. As do sea-chanties, incidentally, transmitted via the cotton and tobacco ports.
I did not know that! I did know that shanties/chanties in the sense of work songs are a pretty late part of maritime tradition. The navy of Nelson’s time did not have chanties, nor did the sailors of the Golden Age of Piracy. (They sang, a lot, but not while working; they did have instrumental music while they worked, but they didn’t sing.)
I get the feeling that, as the series went on, Ankh-Morpork’s past has also been modernised. The AM that Vimes is sent back to is a few years before the AM that The Colour of Magic takes place in. Does it feel like that?
He tells them they’re not to take bribes anymore, or steal from the horse’s food, and that they have to get receipts for prisoners they bring to the Unmentionables.
He does something a lot subtler than that – he draws a line between minor corruption, like free doughnuts and stealing petty cash, and major wrongdoing that actually harms efficiency. Vimes knows perfectly well that Nobby steals the petty cash but he lets it happen, because Vimes isn’t a Javert-type dura lex sed lex copper, he’s a believer in order. (Colon, when he’s left in charge, institutes a zero-tolerance policy that goes completely off the rails.)
I didn’t realize the connection to Thief of Time until other readers described it, but it’s so clear on this reread. First it’s implied by ‘They said afterward that the bolt of lightning hit a clockmaker’s shop in the Street of Cunning Artificers, stopping all the clocks at that instant.’ Then Lu-Tze outright says to Qu that “we had the major temporal shattering just as [Vimes] fell through the dome.” Apparently the History Monks detected this “rogue history loop” at some point after Thief of Time and went back to fix it.
‘Leggy was generally considered weird, but conscientiously so.’ I aspire, and strive, to be considered conscientiously weird.
‘Trouble was, you couldn’t shoot someone for having an annoying laugh.’ Good thing, as I had a childhood phase of prolonged laughing fits that annoyed plenty of people.
Pratchettisms:
“I’m not having a dead man in my cemetery!” — Legitimate referring to Reg
‘Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.’ — Vimes’s thoughts
Vimes: “I’ve never heard of you. And I know this city like the back of my hand.”
Lu-Tze: “Right. And how often do you really look at the back of your hand, Mr. Vimes?”
‘And the thing about rooting out plots and spies everywhere is that even if there are no real plots to begin with, there are plots and spies galore very soon.’
‘Quirke looked around for immoral support, and found none.’
Looking back:
The Last Continent involved Ridcully confronting Ponder while Ponder was wearing only his hat. Here it’s vice versa.
Lu-Tze describes the UU wizards of the current (past) time as “a bunch of rather devious and unpleasant men” — the sort we haven’t seen since a number of them died in Sourcery.
The trash in the monks’ urban garden includes a “used sonky.”
Lu-Tze tells Qu that their temporal privy is “saving us four pence a week to Harry King’s bucket boys.” Harry’s slogan was “Taking the Piss since 1961” before his wife made him change it, but I don’t know what point in his lifelong waste-collection business career this is counting from. Two fan-made Discworld timelines respectively put this part of Night Watch (i.e. the Glorious Revolution) in the years 1957 and 1961.
Vimes recites the Watch recruits’ oath verbatim, including punctuation. In emulation of Carrot, but more conscious of what he was doing and why.
Looking ahead:
Vimes and Carrot drop a lot of foreshadowing here:
“Whose side are we on?”
“The Times said we should be supporting little Mouldavia against the agressor, sir.”
“I like Borogravia already. And what does this all mean to us?”
“Probably more refugees, sir.”
“Ye gods, we’ve got no more room. Why do they keep coming here?”
“In search of a better life, sir, I think.”
“A better life? Here?”
“I think things are worse where they come from.”
‘Trouble was, you couldn’t shoot someone for having an annoying laugh.’ Good thing, as I had a childhood phase of prolonged laughing fits that annoyed plenty of people.
Early in I’ve Got a Little List, from the Mikado by Gilbert & Sullivan, in which the executioner lists possible victims, he proposes offing “All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs.”
As per Thief of Time, it’s both. The history of the Disc is so twisted up that it’s different years in different places. Or to put it another way, it was Prachett making sure he always had an excuse for messing up timelines ;)
@15: I was a little surprised that Harry King (and Wallace Sonky) were prominently in business back then. But I guess it’s not too long before the “present day”; it just *feels* like the Distant Dark Ages.
Today is the Glorious 25th of May! How do they rise up . . .
Today is the Glorious 25th of May!
Interesting choice. It’s the national day of Argentina, and the namesake of their navy’s former flagship, the aircraft carrier Vientecinco de Mayo. More importantly, it is Paul Weller’s birthday. https://twitter.com/terryandrob/status/1264836065212477442?s=20
The Glorious 25th of May
Perhaps more to the point, this was the day Richard Cromwell (son of Oliver) resigned as the last Lord Protector in 1659 and, exactly one year later, Charles II landed in Dover after his exile in France
It was also the day Star Wars was released in 1977 but that seems a little shaky for Pratchett to use.
OTOH, it’s Towel Day in honor of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and while it has nothing to do with the theme of the book I can definitely see Pratchett picking it as an homage.