Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Men at Arms – Terry Pratchett (Audiobook)

Read by Nigel Planer
Listened to: December 2012 (at age 34)
I've previously read the book.  Sometime.  A long time ago.

If you haven’t read it:

This is the 15th Discworld novel.  Might as well read Night Watch first, as there are a few other recurring characters who show up.  You probably don’t need to read the rest.

From the back of the book (from The Annotated Pratchett Files ):

"Be a MAN in the City Watch! The City watch needs MEN!"

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).

And they need all the help they can get. Because there's evil in the air and murder afoot and something very nasty in the streets.

It'd help if it could all be sorted out by noon, because that's when Captain Vimes is officially retiring, handing in his badge and getting married.

And since this is Ankh-Morpork, noon promises to be not just high, but stinking.

My Reactons: (Very brief, with really nothing for spoilers) 

Overall: 

I wasn’t looking forward to this book – In general, the Ankh-Mopork books are not my favorites, and in particular, I’d read it before, and wasn't really a fan.  However, I continually found myself surprised at how nice the book was.  I still don’t really like the city, and Cpl. Carrot is much too perfect for me to enjoy all that much, but… I really liked the interplay between Detritus and Cuddy, and the Gaspode story arc, and the police procedural.  Of course it was funny and ridiculous and all that (to be expected at this point in the series) but the story was much stronger than the farce, and many of the new characters were wonderful.

Audiobook reader: 

Good.  Effective use of different voices and a very appropriate reading style to the material.  It seemed like I was missing out on a lot of spelling-related jokes and inferences as things went by, where reading the text would have helped.  Still, it worked all right as an audiobook.

Rating: 4

No comments:

Post a Comment