Night Watch - Time Travel, Revolutions and Hard boiled eggs!

I finished reading The Fifth Elephant on June 16th and soon after, I started reading this book. Even though I enjoyed 'The Fifth Elephant', it didn't warrant a post of its own. It was one of the weaker entries of the City Watch Series, in my opinion.  

A lot has transpired since then, and at every step of the way, I had The 'Night Watch' to fall back on. I read this during a freak thunderstorm, an 8-hour black-out, on the bus to and from Chicago and when I was sick. Which by post pandemic standards is just another week.

I am not merely mentioning this whirlwind of events for the sake of attention, but rather I want to highlight how the story resonates with it.

Love me some Time Travel!

If there is something that I gravitate towards naturally other than the color Blue, then it is stories involving Time Travel. I write this with a Tardis cup holding my assortment of pens in the background. About Time, Time Machine and Back to the Future are some of my favorite movies. In fact, I wanted to write a trilogy of short stories about a time travelling/telekinetic detective Nicolas Parker and did finish the first story when I was young (and foolish).

And there are different types of time travel stories. I am particularly fond of cyclic paradoxes seen in Blink or Heaven Sent Doctor Who episodes. But there is also a tendency of using Time Travel as a tool to tell a story. And Night watch falls into this category.

The author subtly made me feel like I knew where the story was heading and pulled the rug within the first 50 pages. He also makes it absolutely clear that Time Travel is just a plot device, a necessary background to dive into the depths of one of my favorite characters, Samuel Vimes.

The Burden of being a decent human

Samuel Vimes, the commander of Ankh-Morpork police force, gets transported 30 years into the past while chasing a cop killer named Carcer. With a name like Carcer, you know he is up to no good. This happens while Sam's wife goes into labor. This is how the book sets the tone.

The objective for Mr Vimes is simple, don't change the past too much, get Carcer and return to his wife and hopefully newborn baby. It is a simple as that, except it is not. His arrival has already changed things. He assumes the identity of Keel, his mentor and because of time travel, he replaces Keel. Now, he is tasked with mentoring and protecting his younger self, a rookie who just joined the police force.

Let's add another wrinkle into this already complicated setup - The Revolution. Ankh-Morpork of the past is on the cusp of a revolution, events the older Vimes has been through and knows the outcomes of. He knows the events leading up to and of the revolution, knows who lives and dies.

And the city here contrasts drastically with the one in the previous books. In the previous books, the city kept getting better, so did Vimes. The first time I was introduced to Sam in "Guards! Guards!", he was drunk and passed out in the gutters. The reason, he was "brung low by the woman", and the woman being Ankh-Morpork. But over the subsequent books, I have seen this man become the duke of Ankh, the police force grow and the city getting better.

So when city of the past can be only described as bleak and nothing else, it had a compounding effect. Curfews, unchecked police force similar to the Gestapo (called the Unmentionables) and a paranoid dictator at the helm. The tension and distrust the people harbor towards the police force is palpable.

All Vimes wants to do is get back to his present, and his wife. And the Vimes I know is a realist, a survivor but with the anger of a good man. He is a good guy who is capable of bad things. And also, the Vimes I know is one who hates the comfort of a soft bed and good shoes. The entire story explores his struggles with his conflicting interests of surviving, feeling liberated and doing the job in front of him, and how he overcomes it. And I got to say, it is fascinating how much invested I became of a fictional character.

The story is not as free flowing as the other books but my good the dramatic set pieces keep coming one after the other. And each piece takes my breath way thanks to the sheer brilliance of Vimes and in turn of Terry. I couldn't get enough of Vimes's anger, arrogance fighting with his need to survive and doing the right thing.

The characters here, including the city, have never felt more human. And this story also explores Vimes, the policeman. It is one of the best cop stories I have ever come across.

Also, this is a Discworld novel. Even with against a bleak backdrop, Terry is humorous. The trademark footnotes, puns and humor are all in here. And I still can't wrap my head around how it all blends together so flawlessly. I am just in awe, 4 days after finishing the book.  

Closing Thoughts

Yes, I was miserable in the past month and half or so. So, seeing the miserable state of the Ankh-Morpork and Vimes going ahead and doing the job in front of him really helped me pull through it. And hearing about the Chicago fire during my boat tour over there, resonated with Ankh-Morpork from this book.

In a way, the fortuitous bizarre circumstances and last minute trip only served to enhance my experience reading this book. I loved each and every minute of it. I wholeheartedly would chew any ear I can find with the praises of this particular book. And I wish more people from my circle would read Discworld novels.

It may not be for everyone, but when it clicks, there is nothing like it. With that, I will be signing off. If you have any thoughts, or suggestions on what to read next or simply want to talk, feel free to hit me up.