Guards! Guards! (Discworld Series #8)

by Terry Pratchett

Overview

Here there be dragons...and the denizens of Ankh-Morpork wish one huge firebreather would return from whence it came. Long believed extinct, a superb specimen of draco nobilis ("noble dragon" for those who don't understand italics) has appeared in Discworld's greatest city. Not only does this unwelcome visitor have a nasty habit of charbroiling everything in its path, in rather short order it is crowned King (it is a noble dragon, after all...).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781473200180
Publisher:	Gollancz, Victor Limited
Publication date:	03/28/2014
Series:	Discworld Series
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) is the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.

Hometown:

Salisbury, Wiltshire, England

Date of Birth:

April 28, 1948

Place of Birth:

Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England

Education:

Four honorary degrees in literature from the universities of Portsmouth, Bristol, Bath and Warwick

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

This is where the dragons went.

They lie...

Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word we're looking for here is...

...dormant.

And although the space they occupy isn't like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. Not a cubic inch there but is filled by a claw, a talon, a scale, the tip of a tail, so the effect is like one of those trick drawings and your eyeballs eventually realize that the space between each dragon is, in fact, another dragon.

They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly and proud and arrogant.

And presumably, somewhere, there's the key.

Editorial Reviews

"Brilliant, and on everybody's reading list." — SFreviews.net

"At once brilliant and ludicrous, borrowing heavily from traditional mythology and fantasy writings, and then turns them on their heads, spins them around, flips them inside out and mirrors them onto the page. Nothing is the same when you step inside the world of Discworld, and you love Pratchett for it." — Fantasy Book Review (UK)

"There's no wrong place to start reading Pratchett. . . . The film-noir-with-dragons novel Guards! Guards!, the series starting point for sharp, dutiful City Watch head Commander Vimes, is [a] solid entryway." — NPR

"As traumatic as it is to only choose one Pratchett, this first entry in his Guards sub-series encompasses everything that is brilliant about his writing: terrific characterisation and plotting, a completely believable world, and new details that come up with each re-reading. Thirty years after it was published, the story of dwarves, dragons and good police work remains fresh, sharp, and incredibly funny." — Telegraph (UK)

From the Publisher