Men at Arms

This is one of the best of the Discworld books: the writing, the characters, the story are all good. Remarkably, it's the fifteenth Discworld book, but only the second about the City Watch. Here we meet Angua, Leonard of Quirm, and Foul Ole Ron for the first time, but we'll be seeing more of them later. Sam Vimes gets married, and we marvel at the effect of cooling on the brain of a troll.

However, I'm rarely keen on Pratchett's baddies, and here he does it again: we have a caricature crazy-and-evil baddy. A baddy could just be bad, there's no need to overdo it. An author who's feeling subtle could give us a baddy who's not even really bad, but just on the wrong side through force of circumstance. Not many authors seem to be that subtle.

We also have a weapon that's not explicitly magical, and no magic has been put into it, but somehow it takes over people's minds. Also, its untrained and inexperienced users seem implausibly accurate with it; and it functions pretty well for a one-off prototype. If it's a magical weapon, I think that should be made explicit; if if isn't, then it shouldn't have quasi-magical properties. You may of course disagree.

These things don't spoil the book, which is a good book regardless, but it's not quite one of my top favourites.