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bluejayreads's review against another edition
3.5
As much as I love Commander Sam Vimes as a character, I often struggle with the City Watch books. And much of that is just because of their topics – they tend to be the most overtly political of the Discworld books, and as Commander Vimes is the Discworld equivalent of a police chief, often lean towards the police procedural and/or mystery ends of the plot spectrum. None of these are things I’m particularly fond of.
So for the first roughly half of this book, which primarily a murder mystery about who murdered one particular dwarf, I struggled quite a bit. There were some promising elements, to be sure. I was especially hopeful that we might get some character work as Commander Vimes was forced to confront his racism against vampires – but it ended up being Angua who had to wrestle personal anti-vampire sentiment, and everything on Vimes’ end shook out in a less-than-ideal way. There was definitely a lot more to this plot than a simple murder mystery, and even more than an escalation of the dwarf-troll tensions that have run through the past couple City Watch books. But it took a while to actually get going on that.
Once it actually got going, it was quite good. And if I’m honest, even the early parts weren’t bad – they just weren’t exactly to my taste. This book is one of the heavier entries in the Discworld canon, full of both literal and figurative darkness, a lot of prejudice and hatred, and some very real threats to our protagonists’ life, limbs, and even loved ones. It was well-written and entertaining, but felt confused at many points. The themes and messages got muddled, to the point where I can’t pick out anything beyond the obvious “war bad” and “history is written by biased tellers.” And the plot was fantastically complicated. Commander Vimes struggled to put it all together, and so did I. And it didn’t feel like one of those complex plots that made sense once you knew the answer. In fact, even knowing how everything shook out I felt like I still didn’t have all the answers.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an enjoyable read. For all its problems, it’s still well-written, with a cast of interesting characters and enough adventure and zany happenings to keep me engaged, even if I wasn’t always sure how everything fit together. I think it had some potential that it didn’t quite live up to, but it was still a perfectly fine read and I enjoyed it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Racism and Murder
Minor: Child death and Drug use
Possession/mind controlwoweewhoa's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Drug use
Moderate: Racism, Murder, and Alcohol
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