Men at Arms (Discworld Series) Book

Quota policy, by integrating minorities in the already chaotic and dysfunctional City Watch, while a military arms race and intrigues are boiling.

Prejudices and racism are some of the main tropes behind the curtain and this often used elements come to ingenious culminations with the integration of alternative fighters from contrasting fantasy folks. Using the different magic abilities, weaknesses, and natural hereditary enmities as metaphors, the City Watch turns into a multicultural melting pot of ideas, stereotypes, and vendettas.

I am not sure how many dark fantasy comedy detective novels could be seen as heirs of this idea of investigating trolls, werewolves, vampires, zombies, whatevers,…, but the potential of using the magic abilities for finding the nasty criminals has great potential, as it unites plot, character, and ability and enables manifold expansion options. As far as I know, Butcher did it best with his close to legendary Dresden Files series and I am too lazy to remember and name similar authors.

These two elements, open and hidden racism, the different abilities, secret superweapons, another evil force in the background next to Vetinari and, jay, a wedding, how romantic, make it one of Pratchett's best works. He is now at the peak of his craft, took some books to really get started and become more professional, and will, from the novels of this middle, golden age period on be one of the best, or even the best, humoristic author. Until he turns so dark that I still remember some of the extremely depressing and sad scenes he used in his later work.

Carrot is big in this, his subtle, Vetinari style cool badassness is urgently needed to handle the situation. I didn´t look enough for the innuendos and connotations surrounding Carrot´s secret and how it plays with the philosophy of good leadership and responsibility, I have to take a more detailed glimpse at it in the big reread.

I also don´t remember enough about the implications, innuendos, and gags regarding militarization and how new technology can be used, abused, and misused and how Pratchett instrumentalized one of the most defining elements of human history to satirize greed and misled patriotism. Technologies and ideologies and their influence on more or less primitive societies are an often seen element of his work, something reality should possibly cut a slice off from, because these two little critters are often underestimated, or simply overseen, harbingers of prosperity or doom.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:


This one is added to all Pratchettian reviews:

The idea of the dissected motifs rocks, highlighting the main real world inspirational elements of fiction and satire is something usually done with so called higher literature, but a much more interesting field in readable literature, as it offers the joy of reading, subtle criticism, and feeling smart all together.