Discworld - They're Watching You

Now we are finally at the beginning of the tales of the Watch with Guards! Guards!.  Vimes is mostly a diminutive Clint Eastwood, but had bits of Humphrey Bogart thrown in.  Again there are beginning hints of the power of narrative.  Once again, Pratchett weaves a story that wanders around the city and comes tightly together at the end.

Jennifer said that as Pratchett writes a book, his "chapters" start long and by the end sometimes they're little more than a few paragraphs long.  To be fair he rarely uses chapters until he gets to the tales of Moist von Lipwig, but instead separates scenes by a white space break, but what she says holds true.  It reminds me of a prose poem we read my junior year of high school.  It used varying spacing in it to indicate different speeds of events.  It was about a cowboy doing trick shooting, and the rapidity of shooting a series of cans had the words of the numbers almost merged into a single word.

When Pratchett is in his stride, his writing is reminiscent of that.

[Also, I seem to have jumped ahead in my eagerness to get to the Watch.  I'll be backtracking for "Troll Bridge" and Pyramids.]

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Appearing in this book:

A Dwarf Bar

Ankh-Morpork

Blind Io

Boggis

Cabbage

Carrot Ironfounderson (Lance Constable/Constable)

Copperhead

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler

Death

Detritus the Troll

Dwarf Bread

Dwarven Kings

Errol
Fred Colon (Sergeant)

Harga

Havelock Vetinari (Lord Patrician)

Igneous the Troll

Intelligent Rats

Ironfounderson the Dwarf

Jimkin Bearhugger's Whiskey

L-Space

Nobby Nobbs (Corporal)

Samuel Vimes (Captain)

Sybil Ramkin (Lady)

The Librarian

The Mended Drum

The Million to One Chance

The Pork Futures Warehouse

The Trousers of Time

Unseen University
Vetinari's Aunt