This is the twenty-ninth Discworld book, and it features the Ankh-Morpork city watch. Mostly, though, it focuses on Sam Vimes, who is sent back in time with a criminal named Carcer due to a lightning storm over the Unseen University. They arrive a few days before a revolution that Vimes participated in as a young recruit to the watch. In this new timeline, Carcer kills young Sam’s mentor, John Keel, and Vimes ends up having to take his place.
Samuel Vimes has the largest character arc in the whole of the Discworld, though throughout the series he has a consistent core of raging at injustices and being stubbornly oppositional to unearned authority. When we first met him in Guards! Guards! he was a drunk in the gutter, with all his rage turned in on himself. He’s now an important member of Ankh-Morpork society, and married into nobility despite himself. Finding himself now having to take the place of the man who effectively made him who he is adds an interesting layer of self-reflection.
The city during the revolution is very different from the Ankh-Morpork of the series’ present day. The patrician of the time, Lord Winder, employs secret police called Unmentionables, and the people are scared and angry. Carcer, the man that Vimes is trying to catch, actually joins the Unmentionables and is revelling in the situation.
There is a particularly wonderful section in the midst of the revolution where Reg Shoe, who is caught up in the spirit of the moment, declares what their demands should be: freedom, truth, and justice. Vimes declares that he wants a hard-boiled egg.
At the end of the book, Vimes’ son is born in a sequence I found very touching. We’ve seen the more paternal side of Vimes in the book, and he’s earned this moment. Tonally this is much less humorous than most Discworld entries, miles away from the earlier Rincewind novels. I found it tense and gripping. This is definitely one of my favourite books in the series.