A decent Watch book. Introduces Angua and sees the ever entertaining Detritus join the Watch. ( )

To put it plainly, this book was just FUN. ( )

Book two in the series and my second Pratchett book. I thought this personally to be a great improvement on the first book, the general quality of writing and the jokes were certainly better, and the plot was far more plausible and developed. It's hard not to get sentimental for Carrot. :) A good read. ( )

I loved it! It was refreshing to see so much of Carrot's point of view, though I do adore Sam Vimes (and we get plenty of him as well). Men at Arms shows us the evolution of the Watch from the bumbling foursome in Guards! Guards! to the well-trained (and multi-specied) group we see in later books. In Men At Arms, the watch has to investigate a theft and a string of murders, all while navigating the tricky political waters that would much rather sweep everything under the carpet. A+ ( )

One thing I've found with the Discworld series is that the books start out fantastic, but when I start feeling like everything is coming together for the finale, they sort of fizzle and squirm and lose all momentum until the finale does arrive (finally). It's frustrating and usually has me leaving the books for a bit when I hit the 2/3 mark.

Happily, I did not have that problem with Men at Arms. It was a great book all the way through, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I suspect that my enjoyment may have been tempered had I been at all familiar with police procedural dramas, or then again, maybe it would have been enhanced? But either way, I really know nothing of the genre, so I read the novel as a general humor thing than a specific parody (er, even though I knew it's a parody and all).

Among the things I like best in the novel are: Carrot's weird charisma and the way he tries to date Angua; the troll vs dwarf feud; and just about every scene with Vimes. I'm always fond of Ankh-Morpork, and there was a lot of it here - it's really practically a character itself, I suppose.

I can't say there's anything in the book that I didn't like, or really even much that I liked a lot less than my favorite bits. I suppose I thought the investigative scenes with the Assassins and Fool Guilds weren't much my thing, nor the scenes with the Gonne, but I didn't actively dislike them, either. But, then, those happened to be some of the most strikingly "police procedural" parts of the book.

This one is definitely getting grouped with the other Discworld books that I look forward to rereading in the future. ( )