Night Watch (Discworld)

Night Watch is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the 29th book in his "Discworld" series, published in 2002. The protagonist of the novel is Sir Samuel Vimes, commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. A five-part radio adaptation of the novel was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. "Night Watch" placed second in the annual Locus Poll for best fantasy novel.
Plot summary.
On the morning of the 30th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution of the Twenty-Fifth of May (and as such the anniversary of the death of John Keel, Vimes' hero and former mentor), Sam Vimes — whose wife is in labor with their first child — is caught in a magical storm while pursuing Carcer, a notorious criminal. He awakens to find that he has somehow been sent back in time.
Vimes's first idea is to ask the wizards at the Unseen University to send him home, but before he can act on this, he is arrested for breaking curfew by a younger version of himself. Incarcerated in a cell next to his is Carcer, who after being released joins the Unmentionables, the secret police carrying out the paranoid whims of the Patrician of the time, Lord Winder.
When he is taken to be interrogated by the captain, time is frozen by Lu-Tze, who tells Vimes what has happened and that he must assume the identity of Sergeant-At-Arms John Keel, who was to have arrived that day but was murdered by Carcer. It is stated that the event which caused Vimes and Carcer to be sent into the past was a major temporal shattering. Vimes then returns to the office, time restarts and he convinces the captain that he is Keel.
Young Vimes believes Vimes to be Keel, allowing Vimes to teach Young Vimes the lessons for which Vimes idolized Keel. The novel climaxes in the Revolution. Vimes, taking command of the watchmen, successfully avoids the major bloodshed erupting all over the city and manages to keep his part of it relatively peaceful. After dealing with the Unmentionables' headquarters he has his haphazard forces barricade a few streets to keep people safe from the fighting between rebels and soldiers. However, the barricades are gradually pushed forward during the night (by Fred Colon and several other simple-minded watchmen) to encompass the surrounding streets until Vimes finds himself in control of a quarter of the city, dubbed "The Glorious People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road", with a still alive Reg Shoe as one of the leading figures.
The ruler, Lord Winder, is effectively assassinated by the young Assassin's Guild student Havelock Vetinari, and the new Patrician Lord Snapcase calls for a complete amnesty. However, he sees Keel as a threat and sends Carcer to lead a death squad of Unmentionables, watchmen and the palace guard to murder Keel. Several policemen (the ones who died when the barricade fell in the original timeline) are killed in the battle, as is Reg Shoe; Vimes manages to fight off the attack until he can grab Carcer, at which point they are returned to the future and Keel's body is placed in the timeline Vimes has just left, to tie things up, as in the "real" history, Keel died in that fight.
Vimes' son is born, with the help of Doctor "Mossy" Lawn, whom Vimes met while in the past, and Vimes finally arrests Carcer, promising him a fair trial before he is hanged. A subsequent conversation with Lord Vetinari reveals that the Patrician alone knows Vimes took Keel's place, also that he fought alongside Keel's men against Carcer's death squad. He proposes that the old Watch House at Treacle Mine Road (where Keel was sergeant, and which was destroyed by the dragon in "Guards! Guards!") be rebuilt.
Background and publication.
"Night Watch" is the twenty-ninth novel in the comic fantasy "Discworld" series, written by Terry Pratchett, and the sixth to focus on the character of Sam Vimes. Pratchett felt the book was closer to "Discworld" novels like "The Fifth Elephant" more so than the first book, "The Colour of Magic", believing the series had "evolved", attributing the series' success to its ability to change. Pratchett called the humour in the book "the humour that comes out of bad situations", comparing it to the humour of "M*A*S*H". The contents of the book, such as the secret police and the torture chamber, meant that an abundance of gags would seem wrong.
Pratchett commented:
Paul Kidby illustrated the cover of British edition, with "Night Watch" being the first main-sequence "Discworld" novel not to have a cover by Josh Kirby. Kidby had previously worked on "Discworld" in "The Last Hero", "The Pratchett Portfolio" and "Nanny Ogg's Cookbook", establishing "[his] own 'look for the series. Kidby chose to parody Rembrandt's painting "Night Watch", an idea he'd had since first reading "Guards! Guards!", and talked with Pratchett about what characters to include. Kidby pays tribute to the late artist by placing him in the picture, in the position where Rembrandt is said to have painted himself. At the time, Kidby recalls being criticised for making the cover "too brown".
Reception.
The book received critical acclaim. Robert Hanks of "The Independent" drew attention to a "slight softening of the funny bone" and a "hardening of the issues" in the later "Discworld" books, commenting on a lesser amount of jokes per page in "Night Watch". He criticised the book's slow start, but called the book intriguing for its "Chestertonian common-sense morality" and drew comparison to the book's events to the Bloody Sunday. "The New York Times"s Therese Littleton praised the book as "transcend[ing] standard genre fare with its sheer schoolboy humour and characters who reject their own stereotypes".
"Night Watch" won the 2003 Prometheus Award, and came runner-up in the Locus Poll for best fantasy novel. On the suggestion of the book having "darker" themes, Pratchett responded:
Adaptation.
A five-part radio adaptation of the novel was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from February 27, 2008 that featured Philip Jackson as Sam Vimes and Carl Prekopp as young Sam.