Thursday, July 23, 2009

#14 Guards! Guards!


OK, I'm not making any argument that this is great literature, but it is one of the funniest books I have ever read.

Terry Pratchett is not exactly friendly to Christianity (I'm not sure he's especially unfriendly either though), so it's no good going looking for 'underlying motifs of redemption' etc. But he does write funny books. Well, I think about half of them are - some sequences do get repetitive.

Guards! Guards! stands out for me though as being a great story, with really mad humour, well drawn characters and some really good ideas. Woven through also are a myriad references to police movies from planet earth, but worked out in terms of Discworld. Dirty Harry, but a baby dragon with wind, instead of a gun; endless police show cliches; and, which I remember clearly though I must have read this 15 years ago, the great "million to one shot".

So, if you need something distracting and funny, I recokon you could do worse.

(And the dragon was called Eryl; and for those of you to whom this means something, yes I did read it whilst attending you-know-where)

2 comments:

minternational said...

This one has taken me by surprise - can't say why, though. I guess mad humour fits the Badger's modus operandi...

Never read any TP but have often felt I ought to. Maybe you've just provided the incentive: a dragon called Eryl.

TheMaskedSparrow said...

You are not referring to that Eryl are you?

I have never read a TP either. But I do remember listening to the Badger laughing away in a corner whilst he did.