Night Watch (2002)
Night Watch is a 2002 fiction book written by Terry Pratchett.
Commander Sam Vimes chases a killer across the rooftops of Ankh-Morpork and lands, through a mishap involving the History Monks, thirty years in his own past. The city is meaner here, and Vimes arrives just before a doomed street uprising he remembers from the wrong side. Forced to pose as his own late mentor, he ends up training a raw young watchman who happens to be a much younger Sam Vimes. Terry Pratchett writes Discworld's twenty-ninth novel with less slapstick and more weight, a story about duty, revolution, and the ordinary decency of keeping the peace.
Quick answers
What is Night Watch about?
Commander Sam Vimes chases a killer across the rooftops of Ankh-Morpork and lands, through a mishap involving the History Monks, thirty years in his own past. The city is meaner here, and Vimes arrives just before a doomed street uprising he remembers from the wrong side. Forced to pose as his own late mentor, he ends up training a raw young watchman who happens to be a much younger Sam Vimes. Terry Pratchett writes Discworld's twenty-ninth novel with less slapstick and more weight, a story about duty, revolution, and the ordinary decency of keeping the peace.
When was Night Watch published?
Night Watch was published in 2002.
Who made Night Watch?
Night Watch was written by Terry Pratchett.
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Night Watch in our writing
- Companion guide: Discworld: The Complete Guide to Terry Pratchett's Flat Planet
A few thoughts on Night Watch
Vimes's clear-eyed view of policing and moral compromise finds a kindred spirit in Disco Elysium, a game about a wrecked detective and the politics of a broken city. For more of Terry Pratchett's blend of comedy and conscience, the Good Omens series carries the same warm, skeptical humor.
More from the mind that built Discworld, page and screen
Night Watch is Terry Pratchett's twenty-ninth trip through Discworld, and the world he built keeps expanding in every direction. Snuff sends an older Sam Vimes back to detective work, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents and A Hat Full of Sky take the same setting into younger corners of the series, and Good Omens, co-written with Neil Gaiman, carries Pratchett's exact brand of apocalyptic comedy to television.
Fantasy worlds that gleefully send up their own genre's clichés
Discworld's whole engine is fantasy satire, and Night Watch runs it through a grittier revolution plot without losing the joke. Shrek and Shrek 2 turn fairy-tale logic inside out for laughs, Hercules gives Greek myth a wisecracking makeover, Galavant sings its way through every chivalry cliché, and the comic Dungeon plays the same joke on sword-and-sorcery that Pratchett played on wizards.