Men at Arms: A Discworld Novel:15

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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!). 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. A lot happens in Men at Arms because Sam Vimes is Sam Vimes, and that’s a very good thing. Among all of Pratchett’s Discworld characters, I think I like him maybe the best.

Srinivas, Sitara (2020). STITCHING A NEW NARRATIVE: ENGAGING WITH SUSTAINABILITY IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY (PDF) (Report). Detritus recruits two trolls named Flint and Moraine to the Watch. Could be the same two from Moving Pictures, though "Flint" changed his name a couple of times in that book. But what it's got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-constable Cuddy (really a dwarf), Lance-constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-constable Angua (a woman ... most of the time) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving).

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." Abel, Jennifer (2013-11-14). "Fingerhut boots and the Vimes' Boots paradox". ConsumerAffairs. Archived from the original on 2022-02-08 . Retrieved 2022-02-08. To most other dogs, Gaspode is worse off. Gaspode is a real mutt, and a smallish, battered mutt, at that. But, as a dog who can talk, he has the Power as he displays when he is facing a circle of mad canines ready to chew the life out of him:

The pounding spirit of the gonne flowing up Vimes’ arms met the armies of sheer stone-headed Vimesness surging the other way. Klatchian Coffee: Used to sober up Captain Vimes after he falls Off the Wagon. They give him too much, and have to then provide half a glass of whiskey to take his brain from knurd to sober. Carrot spells "role" as "Roll" in both his letter home at the beginning, and the letter to Vimes at the end. At least his terrible spelling is consistent...

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Vimes (despite hating Assassins) admits that Dr. Cruces was probably a decent man before the Gonne took hold of his mind - or, at least, that he had good intentions.

Coppers didn’t, as a rule. It wasn’t that they were less prone to commit crimes, it was just that the crimes they committed tended to be so far above the normal level of criminality that they were beyond the reach of men with bad boots and rusting mail. I Am the Trope: When some young Assassins see Vimes in their guild house and one asks who he is, the by now quite angry Vimes yells "The Law, you sons of bitches!"

How Many Fingers?: After being forced to turn in his badge, Sam Vimes gets so drunk that the only answer he can give to the question "How many fingers am I holding up?" is "Bleargh". When Carrot follows it up with "How many hands?", Captain Vimes manages to guess "four". Turns out that Terry has been doing this for years. At least, he has been if Men at Arms is a good example. (Note—I realized all of my examples above were YA, and this is adult, but if you can’t make a forced metaphor once in a while, then what’s the good of having a literary license in the first place?) Fingers-Mazda, the first thief in the world, stole fire from the gods. But he was unable to fence it. It was too hot." The showdown between Vimes, Cruces and Carrot is an homage to the end of For a Few Dollars More. Vimes' watch even plays the same tune as El Indio's music box. With nothing but a few italicized bings Pterry managed to accurately reproduce musical sound in text.

This book came out one year after Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins premiered in London, and I find myself wondering if Pratchett saw it because a sizable portion of the show centers on this issue, particularly the aptly named “The Gun Song”: We get further commentary on how policing can lead to the dehumanization of the very people you’re meant to be protecting, as we watch Detritus start saying things like this about his own people: Firearms Are Revolutionary: It's revealed that the Disc's greatest inventor came up with a revolver rifle, which briefly terrorizes Ankh-Morpork when it's stolen by an unhinged assassin. Something about the "gonne"'s singular nature and sheer killing power turned it into an Evil Weapon capable of possessing its wielders, and it actively enforces Fantasy Gun Control by killing an artisan that was trying to duplicate it. When the thing is finally defeated, it's buried forever with a fallen guardsman so that he can have a peerless weapon in the afterlife. The Lethal Connotation of Guns and Others: The Gonne has a preternatural ability to make its wielders go Drunk with Power, thanks to the ease, speed, and accuracy with which it can kill from a distance. This and the metaphysical power of its Uniqueness Value make it more of an In-Universe threat than, say, the Troll Constable Detritus' handheld ballista that fires an incendiary javelin cloud.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. 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 dogs are shown to be able to discuss with each other on relatively complex subjects (though this could be interpreted as Translation Convention) and have a lot of human-like behaviours, such as raptly listening to their leader giving speeches on the superiority of the Canine Race. In Moving Pictures it was a plot point that normal, non-magically enhanced dogs were mostly concerned with eating, sleeping, and mating, while Witches Abroad showed that the results of forcing human thoughts on a wolf was not pretty. Someone else who is worse off than most other people is Leonard of Quirm (a kind of Leonardo da Vinci), the inventor of the gonne and lots of other stuff. And we get deeper into the mystery going on here, knowing that d’Eath is dead and someone else has the gonne, that the gonne seems to be talking to its wielder (and using the NRA’s favorite slogan, which is always a comfort), that the stakes for the Disc are unbearably high when we realize that the goal is preventing everyone in the streets of Ankh-Morpork from having a firearm. So next week, we’ll have far more to dig into. Asides and little thoughts: