In general, with this book (as always, you can read it as a standalone but it works so much better if you're familiar with at least City Watch storyline) Ankh was given sort of dimension, becoming like a full-bodied wine someone left open long time ago (which explains the stench). Detritus and rest of the trolls became more than a towering lumps of stone (though they towered quite well thank you very much), Patrician got another shade and dwarven community (apart from Cuddy who is.well, you'll see) together with Guilds showed some of their inner workings. He remained naive (and awfully literal) seven foot tall dwarf, yet he gained that particular shrewdness and street-smart intelligence coming from spending time in Ankh.

Nobby felt downplayed as well, just like CMOT Dibbler.

Captain Vimes particularly felt sort of left out and his storyline wrapped up unusually quick. Pratchett put some layers on his recurring characters though not all got “fair” treatment in that regard. Which meant Met at Arms could kick it up a notch and deliver yet another beautiful rendition of human (and sort of human) character in all of its tattered splendor. It still felt like it's lacking direction but Ankh-Morpork, together with all of its inhabitants, finally came to life. It's far from easy keeping it on the level for so long.Īfter a while things got better. It made sense, when you think about it, with Men at Arms being fifteenth book in a series. On it's own this wouldn't be peculiar, Pratchett did that technique more than once, it was just that this time it all seemed so uninspired, going through the motions-like, without a real kick to it or anything that would warrant your attention. To top it all, it seemed like things weren't getting anywhere (in a sense this remained true till the end), like it was all one enormous set-up for a thing that will eventually come. Everything felt convoluted, jokes were trying too hard, language was sort of artificial, puns were bad and nothing had that natural flow many of Pratchett's earlier books had. Couldn't quite put my finger on it but it seemed like Pratchett struggled with execution. This one started weird and continued to be like that for about a quarter of the book.

Men at arms pratchett