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Men At Arms: (Discworld Novel 15) (Discworld series)

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Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.” Sam Vimes is set to leave the Watch after his impending nuptials to Lady Sybil Ramkin, the noblest and richest woman in Ankh-Morpork ( “The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.”). All while the Watch expands and diversifies - now they employ a troll, a dwarf, and a w- .... ummm, let’s just say a woman - while a string of suspicious murders with a strange new weapon eventually known as a gonne occur - and ethnic tensions between dwarfs and trolls intensify, including in the Watch, and someone needs to sort it all out. The service itself was going to be performed by the Dean, who had carefully made one up; there was no official civil marriage service in Ankh-Morpork, other than something approximating to “Oh, alright them, if you really must.” Murder by Mistake: Lettice Knibbs, lady's maid to the leader of the Beggers' Guild, is killed by a bullet intended for her employer. She'd been trying on one of "Queen" Molly's velvet gowns on the sly. More power than any bow or spear—they just stored up your own muscles’ power, when you thought about it. But the gonne gave you power from outside. Beano the clown isn't comforted when Edward d'Earth says his death was "nothing personal." In fact, that makes him feel even worse - he died for what amounts to no reason.

Beneath Notice: It's established early on in the book that Carrot knows just about everyone in Ankh-Morpork. Then, later on, it's shown how low down the totem pole the late Lettuce Nibbs was that Carrot doesn't know who she was when he and Angua are called in to investigate her murder.Simple, yet Opulent: Sybil's lifestyle is discussed this way, as well as why expensive boots last so long compared to cheap ones (although Vimes prefers the latter). When we met Carrot in Guards! Guards!, he was naive and simple. A six-foot-tall dwarf (he’s adopted) and - as everyone knows but mostly does not say - a true heir to the ancient throne of Ankh-Morpork, he came to the Watch as a very young and astonishingly naive recruit, believing in life by the rules, with very strong sense of right and wrong and justice, with ample charisma that further underscored his apparent simplicity. But it was then. Now, in Men at Arms, Carrot gets his moment, his chance to show why, along with Vimes, he is the heart and soul of the Watch. This is Pratchett’s apology to Carrot for making him a bit of a buffoon in the previous story. Vimes is very outspoken in his disdain for kings and seems to be well versed in how Ankh-Morpork got rid of them. In Guards! Guards! he was surprised to hear that Ankh-Morpork ever was a kingdom. Possibly justified in that it’s possible that the events in that book (and the encouragement of his soon-to-be-wife) lead to him developing those traits. Death Glare: Mr Cheese the bartender insists that a drunken Vimes has to pay his bar bill. Angua and Carrot merely look at Cheese and he immediately changes his mind.

Meanwhile, Captain Samuel Vimes, captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, prepares for his imminent wedding to Sybil Ramkin, the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork. He also must deal with a new group of recruits that he has been required to take on for the sake of diversity: Cuddy (a dwarf), Detritus (a troll), and Angua (a werewolf—but Carrot is unaware of this, and believes she is included because she is female). When a string of seemingly random murders occur among the Guilds of the city, Lord Vetinari forbids Vimes to investigate in a successful ploy to ensure Vimes does investigate. Cuddy and Detritus are forced to work together, resulting in them becoming friends as they overcome their deep-seated racial enmity. Angua works with the talking dog Gaspode, and also forms a romantic connection with Carrot, who loses his virginity to her but handles the discovery that she is a werewolf poorly. Canine Confusion: Used in-universe, when Big Fido urges dogs to rise up and tear out the throats of their human masters, preaching the superiority of wolves in the wild. Angua, who's actually met wolves, knows it's only a delusion. Big Fido, being a small wimpy dog with a bad case of flatulence and crazy eyes, is essentially Adolf Hitler as a Psycho Poodle. Dogs are also apparently capable of being cowed by a human voice (like Gaspode's), especially someone telling them they've been a Bad Dog. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. Major Injury Underreaction: Vetinari's response to an assassination attempt using a secret experimental weapon that leaves him bleeding out and walking with a cane for the rest of his life? "Ah, Vimes. I seem to be losing rather a lot of blood." In one of the other universes, "Corporal Carrot became Sergeant Carrot and, in the fullness of time, died in uniform aged seventy in an unlikely accident involving an anteater." And a localised hurricane painted the Watch-House pastel (as well as fixing a window and doing some other odd jobs around the place).

Bavarian Fire Drill: Nobby of the Ankh-Morpork City Ordnance Inspection City... Audit Bureau Special Audit Inspection. Loss of Identity: The clowns at the Fools' Guild consider a clown's distinctive and unique makeup, his 'face', to define his identity. None of them would ever think to copy another's face, thinking it a taboo. This means they are easily fooled when d'Eath kills Beano and copies his makeup, stealing his identity. Detritus isn't nearly as stupid as he might appear, he's just not in the right environment and counts in twos instead of tens (probably because his silicon brain thinks in binary!). The Patrician sits in a plain chair at the foot of the steps leading up to the ancient golden throne of Ankh-Morpork, taken from the Steward's seat in The Lord of the Rings. However, at the end Carrot learns that the throne is actually just gold foil over (seriously decayed - the throne is several centuries old, after all) wood, the real gold having been stripped and sold long before. As usual on Discworld, it's belief that's important. The Patrician’s smile remained, but his face seemed to pull away from it, leaving it stranded and all alone in the world.

Good tension in books is based, in my opinion, on making the reader care about the characters. Any book will feel fast paced if the characters are in danger. And, Terry is obviously a very good craftsman, with excellent pacing beyond his character drama. Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:Disappointing Heritage Reveal: Big Fido the poodle is a canine supremacist who praises the ideal of wolves over civilized dogs. While he never finds out about the real thing, Angua's narration makes it clear he would suffer from this, as real wolves are nowhere near as big or strong as Fido makes them out to be and don't match his highly romanticized concept of the Noble Wolf.

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