To follow the epic of War and Peace, I treated myself to one of my favourite authors - Terry Pratchett - and book number 69 on the top 100 reads. It's called Guards! Guards! and I read it in 2 days with a great big smile on my face. When Pratchett is on form, boy is he good! This is one of the best of his Discworld books in my opinion, and features The Watch - the much maligned and ignored police force who only work the night shift in the great city of Ankh Morpork. For their own health, The Watch basically ignores the crime that goes on around them. There are less than a handful of them, all with "issues" and their chief is constantly drunk. Into this mix, comes a young innocent lad - name of Carrot - who was raised by dwarfs who discovered him as a toddler in the forest. His adopted father sends him to the big city to learn to be human. Carrot studies all the laws, rules and regulations that The Watch are supposed to uphold, and, much to the amazement of his fellow Watch members, starts to arrest people! As if this wasn't weird enough, a dragon keeps on appearing and burning people to a crisp. Can The Watch save the day and tackle the use of magic which seems to be at work here? Will they accept the help of the Librarian of Unseen University (where wizards learn their craft). Okay, so he might be an orangutan following an accident involving magic, but he does have a bucket load of knowledge gained from years amongst all those books, and has exceptional strength in those long arms. This is such a great read and I laughed out loud on numerous occasions. Great characters, great story telling - fantasy fiction at its very best.
My STAR rating: FIVE.
Length: 416 print pages.
Price I paid: £1.50 (second hand shop).
Formats available: print; audio CD; audio download; multimedia CD; ebook.
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