Review: Guards! Guards!

Terry Patchett is a lunatic who writes deranged stories, and I love them so much. Guards! Guards! is another stellar addition to the greatest collection of absurd books ever conceived, playing on stereotypes of protagonists and medieval story topes, while also dishing out some criticism of human behavior. It has everything you could possibly need:

Spoilers from here, some of my favorite bits:

“I think,” said the Supreme Grand Master, tweaking things a little, “that a wise king would only, as it were, outlaw showy coaches for the undeserving.”

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But when I rule the city, the Supreme Grand Master said to himself, there is going to be none of this. I shall form a new secret society of keen-minded and intelligent men, although not too intelligent of course, not too intelligent. And we will overthrow the cold tyrant and we will usher in a new age of enlightenment and fraternity and humanism and Ankh-Morpork will become a Utopia and people like Brother Plasterer will be roasted over slow fires if I have any say in the matter, which I will. And his figgin

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Somehow, the creature seemed to be concentrating all the power its siblings wasted in flame and noise into a stare like a thermic lance. He couldn’t help remembering how much he’d wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they’d been starving—anything with meat on it would have done.

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It was long and shiny. It looked like something some genius of metalwork—one of those little Zen guys who works only by the light of dawn and can beat a club sandwich of folded steels into something with the cutting edge of a scalpel and the stopping-power of a sex-crazed rhinoceros on bad acid—had made and then retired in tears because he’d never, ever, do anything so good again.

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“Er, just one thing, Captain,” said Colon urgently, to Vimes’s astonished eyes. “You don’t use the ‘M’ word. Gets right up his nose, sir. He can’t help it, he loses all self-control. Like a red rag to a wossname, sir. ‘Ape’ is all right, sir, but not the ‘M’ word. Because, sir, when he gets angry he doesn’t just go and sulk, sir, if you get my drift. He’s no trouble at all apart from that, sir. All right? Just don’t say monkey. Ohshit.”

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He looked up at the hooded figure beside him. “We never intended this,” he said weakly. “Honestly. No offense. We just wanted what was due to us.” A skeletal hand patted him on the shoulder, not unkindly. And Death said, CONGRATULATIONS.

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Usually he could forewarn himself by keeping a careful eye on the kickstool crabs that grazed harmlessly on the dust. When they were spooked, it was time to hide. Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by.

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He felt the sensation of the dragon rummaging around in his mind, trying to find a clue to understanding. He half-saw, half-sensed the flicker of random images, of dragons, of the mythical age of reptiles and—and here he felt the dragon’s genuine astonishment—of some of the less commendable areas of human history, which were most of it. And after the astonishment came the baffled anger. There was practically nothing the dragon could do to people that they had not, sooner or later, tried on one another, often with enthusiasm. You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless, and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape—the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes—we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

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I can see what the captain means, he thought. No wonder he always has a drink after he thinks about things. We always beat ourselves before we even start. Give any Ankh-Morpork man a big stick and he’ll end up clubbing himself to death.

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“You, er, want us to attack him?” said the guard miserably. Thick though the palace guard were, they were as aware as everyone else of the conventions, and when guards are summoned to deal with one man in overheated circumstances it’s not a good time for them. The bugger’s bound to be heroic, he was thinking. This guard was not looking forward to a future in which he was dead.

“Of course, you idiot!”

“But, er, there’s only one of him,” said the guard captain.

“And he’s smilin’,” said a man behind him.

“Prob’ly goin’ to swing on the chandeliers any minute,” said one of his colleagues. “And kick over the table, and that.”

“He’s not even armed!” shrieked Wonse.

“Worst kind, that,” said one of the guards, with deep stoicism. “They leap up, see, and grab one of the ornamental swords behind the shield over the fireplace.”

“Yeah,” said another, suspiciously. “And then they chucks a chair at you.”

“There’s no fireplace! There’s no sword! There’s only him! Now take him!” screamed Wonse.

A couple of guards grabbed Vimes tentatively by the shoulders.

“You’re not going to do anything heroic, are you?” whispered one of them.

“Wouldn’t know where to start,” he said.

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“Never build a dungeon you wouldn’t be happy to spend the night in yourself,” said the Patrician, laying out the food on the cloth. “The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.”

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“What if it’s just a thousand-to-one chance?” said Colon agonizedly.

“What?”

“Anyone ever heard of a thousand-to-one shot coming up?”

Carrot looked up. “Don’t be daft, Sergeant,” he said. “No one ever saw a thousand-to-one chance come up. The odds against it are—” his lips moved—“millions to one.”

“Yeah. Millions,” agreed Nobby.

“So it’d only work if it’s your actual million-to-one chance,” said the sergeant.

“I suppose that’s right,” said Nobby.

“So 999,943-to-one, for example—” Colon began.

Carrot shook his head. “Wouldn’t have a hope. No one ever said, ‘It’s a 999,943-to-one chance but it might just work.’”

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“Yeah,” said Nobby, peering around the captain. “Up against the wall and spread ’em, motherbreath!”

“Eh? What’s he supposed to spread?” whispered Sergeant Colon anxiously.

Nobby shrugged. “Dunno,” he said. “Everything, I reckon. Safest way.”

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“Down there,” he said, “are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no. I’m sorry if this offends you,” he added, patting the captain’s shoulder, “but you fellows really need us.”

“Yes, sir?” said Vimes quietly.

“Oh, yes. We’re the only ones who know how to make things work. You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you’re good at that, I’ll grant you. But the trouble is that it’s the only thing you’re good at. One day it’s the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it’s everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one’s been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It’s part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don’t seem to have the knack.”

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She bore down upon him like a glittering siege engine.