Men at Arms

Men at Arms (1993) Terry Pratchett (Discworld, #15, Watch, #2)

Someone has stolen something from the Assassins Guild. No one knows what it is, but they’re pretty sure it isn’t a good thing.

And this was right. And it was fate that had let Edward recognize this just when he’d got his Plan. And it was right that it was Fate, and the city would be Saved from its ignoble present by its glorious past. He had the Means, and he had the end. And so on …

Edward’s thoughts often ran like this. He could think in italics. Such people need watching.

Preferably from a safe distance.

Captain Vimes is going to get married and retire from the watch. It’s only right, since he’ll be marrying Lady Sybil. But first, he wants to discover what was stolen from the Assassins Guild–and why.

This book has one of the most perfect explanations of generational poverty that I have seen anywhere.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

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 okay 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.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.

This books is all sarcastic takes on politics and the world, except he’s never writing about our world. Not really. Except of course that he is.

Patrician’s view of crime and punishment. If there was crime, there should be punishment. If the specific criminal should be involved in the punishment process then this was a happy accident, but if not then any criminal would do, and since everyone was undoubtedly guilty of something, the net result was that, in general terms, justice was done.

Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Rating: 9/10

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