Guards! Guards!

320 pages

English language

Published Nov. 11, 1991

ISBN:
978-0-552-13462-0
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5 stars (5 reviews)

‘Vimes ran a practised eye over the assortment before him. It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis; half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the remainder were here to rob, importune or sell hotdogs to the rest.’

Insurrection is in the air in the city of Ankh-Morpork. The Haves and Have-Nots are about to fall out all over again.

Captain Sam Vimes of the city’s ramshackle Night Watch is used to this. It’s enough to drive a man to drink. Well, to drink more. But this time, something is different – the Have-Nots have found the key to a dormant, lethal weapon that even they don’t fully understand, and they’re about to unleash a campaign of terror on the city.

18 editions

The story is absolutely amazing and, yet again, investigation of civil compliance with the oppression and the nature of evil

5 stars

Recently I had a chat with my friend from China about moral relativism and absolute evil. There I said, perhaps verbatim, "there is no 100% right things, but there are 100% wrong things".

For Pratchett's Patrician, the statement is even stronger. There are no right things at all:

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,” said the man. “You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”

He waved his thin hand toward the city and walked over to the window.

“A great rolling sea of evil,” he said, almost proprietorially. “Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this …