Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, feat. Kat Day

Episode 125

Release Date: January 31, 2024

Dr Kat Day joins your hosts to talk about Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. They discuss where the novel fits into The City Watch subseries and Discworld as a whole. They somehow manage to agree to disagree about Carrot. There’s conversation about anti heroes, lampshades, and sexy lamps (some more metaphorical than others). This episode features a semi-British Words are Weird.

Find more from Kat:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2222860/14304335-shining-moon-episode-25-when-the-fic-is-quick-i

https://pseudopod.org/

https://twitter.com/chronicleflask

Find us on discord: https://discord.gg/dpNHTWVu6b or support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fictionfanspod

Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris” - Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

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Episode Transcript*

*this transcript is AI generated, please excuse the mess.

Lilly: 0:04

Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. I'm Lily.

Sara: 0:09

I'm Sarah and I am so delighted to welcome writer, editor and podcaster Dr. Kat Day on to talk about Nightwatch with us.

Kat: 0:17

Hi. Hi there. Thank you for inviting me on. Very happy to be here.

Sara: 0:22

We're happy to have you.

Lilly: 0:24

Alright. I know we're itching to talk about this wonderful book, but I'm going to delay us a little bit and ask what's something great that happened recently.

Kat: 0:32

Well, I was gonna mention another podcast'cause I've got, I had another podcast episode out this week because I am right in the middle of the, of, uh, codex. I don't know if people know Codex, but Codex is a, a writing group online and right in the minute, it's weekend Warrior, which is where you write flash fiction every week. So I'm right in the middle of that, which is on every January and it's always chaotic. But, uh, a podcast episode came out on Wednesday about writing flash fiction. So that was a good, that was, that was fun to record and it was, uh, fun to talk about. It's always nice to have something come out. So that was, that was good. And I, you know, I always enjoyed this contest, although I do invariably find myself tearing my hair out at some point. Oh, I run out words.

Lilly: 1:13

That's awesome.

Sara: 1:14

And we will, uh, link to that episode in our show notes. So listener, if you wanna go listen to that, you can easily.

Lilly: 1:21

Sarah, how about you?

Sara: 1:22

My good thing is that out of the blue, a friend who had kind of dropped off the face of the earth about a year and a half ago reached out, and so it was really nice to get back in contact with him. So that's my good thing.

Lilly: 1:34

That's wonderful.

Kat: 1:36

Oh, that's cool.

Lilly: 1:37

It's always nice to hear from someone when you weren't expecting it.

Sara: 1:39

Yeah.

Lilly: 1:40

My good thing is that I got a new video game, although that happened quite a while ago and I haven't had time to play it. So my actual good thing is that I finally had a few hours of downtime this morning and started this game.

Sara: 1:53

Nice.

Lilly: 1:54

It's still an early access. It's called Fabledom. It's like a strategic city builder, but it's set in a fairy tale setting, which is

Kat: 2:01

Oh,

Lilly: 2:02

I'm liking it so far. That was nice to just like do something with no purpose for a little bit

Kat: 2:08

it has. It has purpose. Playing games is important.

Lilly: 2:11

exact right? Like giving yourself some downtime. Not every moment must be productive anyway. What's everyone drinking this, uh, afternoon slash evening?

Kat: 2:21

I am drinking tea. I am just leaning into the British stereotype. I am more of a coffee drinker, to be fair, but at night it's late for me. It's nine o'clock here, so yeah, I tend to drink tea because it's slightly less caffeinated.

Lilly: 2:36

Yes, absolutely. Sarah, you also look like you have tea.

Sara: 2:39

I am also drinking tea. Yes, it's grey and rainy out. So, uh, a perfect afternoon to sit in with a warm mug of tea.

Lilly: 2:48

Well, I experimented with making a shrub, so I'm drinking a raspberry vinegar bubbly water thing. It's really good. There's some, uh, flexibility with the word make. Uh, I did not actually make the vinegar. I just infused store-bought vinegar, but it's raspberry and delicious and tangy, and it's probably not the right weather for like a tangy, sweet, cold drink, but oh, well.

Sara: 3:15

I make a plum shrub every year with my father's plums because he has three plum trees and they're very productive, and that's more plums than one person can eat or even two people can eat. And I really like using it in salad dressing. So if you haven't tried it in salad dressing, you should. You should try using your new shrub in that.

Lilly: 3:35

we'll see if it lasts long enough and if not, I'll have to make

Sara: 3:37

Fair enough.

Lilly: 3:40

Okay. And other than Nightwatch, which we are about to discuss at great length, has anyone read anything good lately?

Kat: 3:46

I am in the middle of a Marvelous Light by Freya Mark. SC, I might be mispronouncing her name horribly, and if so, I apologize. I should have, it occurs to me, I should have, uh, checked that before I started. Yeah, it's period. But it's fantasy and it involves these two men and, and one works for the government and they both work for the government, but one kind of works for this magical branch of the government and the other one sort of finds himself in that same branch sort of by accident. So it's all the kind of stuff that happened and it, so there's the kind of a romance going on between the two guys and it's, yeah, it's a really good book.

Lilly: 4:23

That sounds wonderful.

Sara: 4:24

Yeah, I've heard really good things about it. I have it sitting on my shelf, but have, have not had the time to pick it up yet.

Kat: 4:29

It's slightly, it took me a little bit to get into at the start. It refers to characters by lots of different names, which. Is a thing that you sometimes get with period books.'cause you've got characters who've got a title, so they're Lord something. But then they're also known by their surname, by their sort of acquaintances, and then their intimate friends call them by their first names. And so it just, it takes you a little while of like, wait, is that the same person as that? It was like a Yeah, but what, what? Having got my head around all of that, then I was like, oh, this is a, yeah. It's really like the world building is fabulous. It's very richly detailed and there's lots of really interesting stuff going on and you could sort of feel this whole world sort of unfolding. I recommend yeah, pick it up, give it a read.

Sara: 5:19

It also has a very beautiful cover.

Kat: 5:21

Yes, it does.

Lilly: 5:22

Sarah, have you had an abundance of free time? You didn't tell me about.

Sara: 5:26

I have, I have not had an abundance of free time, so I haven't actually done much reading besides Nightwatch

Lilly: 5:32

Yes. Oh, I was so excited. So this is the first time I've read this book in a couple of years.

Sara: 5:38

since May 18th, twenty-twenty-one, because we had an episode on Nightwatch come out on the twenty-fifth of May twenty-Twenty-two.

Lilly: 5:46

It was a couple of years, and so it was not one that I reread as often as you do Sarah. So, uh, I think I'll probably be coming into it a little bit fresher than both of you guys. So I know we all read different like formats. I read an e-book. I have the physical copy of course, but you can't read that at two A.M. when you wake up for no reason. So I read it as an e-book. The formatting bothered me a little bit, but that's just kind of what you get with e-books sometimes.

Sara: 6:12

I, I wrote it as an ebook as well, even though I also have the physical copy. And I actually didn't have an issue with the formatting. I remember trying to read a Discworld novel as an ebook way, way, way, way, way back when, and that was before I think they had figured out how to properly do footnotes in eBooks, so you couldn't, like, you couldn't jump back and forth and you can now. So it made it actually for very pleasant reading, I thought.

Kat: 6:36

Yeah, that I, I remember that was a pain. It's still, occasionally it's not with Discord books anymore'cause they appear to have fixed it, but occasionally you find it with other books where it's fine for the first chapter. Mind you, Discord books don't usually have chapters, so maybe that makes it easier. But then the second chapter, sometimes the footnotes go back to the first. Chapter because they haven't got the numbering separated.

Lilly: 6:59

Mmhmm.

Kat: 6:59

So it's different restarts again at one. So yeah, you end up have, every time you wanna check a book note, you have to leave a bookmark. Otherwise you can't find your page, which just drives you slightly up the wall. It is a lot easier with a paper copy, but I read the audio bit.

Lilly: 7:12

Oh, how does the audio book do footnotes?

Kat: 7:14

Oh, they are all read by, um, oh, good grief. You know, it is shocking that I can't remember his name.

Sara: 7:22

Was it, uh, John Coleshaw, like you

Kat: 7:25

No,

Sara: 7:25

saying earlier? Oh.

Kat: 7:26

All the footnotes are done by the same person in all the books. And death is done by the same person in all the books. And death is Peter, Sarah, with Sarah. See, I know his name, but I just can't say Sarah with him. I'm sorry. And the footnotes are by um, oh God. Shocking. Bill Nye. There we go. Bill Nye. So Bill Nye does all the footnotes in all the books, and every time there's a footnote, there's just a little jingle Jangle noise. And then Bill Nye reads the footnote. It's rather lovely. Yeah.

Lilly: 8:04

That's delightful.

Kat: 8:05

Death turns up because obviously death is in every single book except for Snuff and Wee. Free, Men. Those are the two books without death in as your pub Fact quiz. Pub quiz fact. So, yeah, so he, he's in all of the books. He just reads all the death parts.

Lilly: 8:22

That's awesome. My copy had had the links to the footnotes done correctly, but they weren't numbered. They were all just asterisks. So I had to like remember where I was on the page of footnotes to figure out which one I was supposed to read in that moment, and that was a little frustrating.

Sara: 8:38

It didn't direct you to the specific, but

Lilly: 8:41

It brought me to the page that had like all of them on it. But then I had to go, which 1:00 AM I doing? No, I read that one already. Nope, that one's later. And, uh, that definitely broke my flow a little bit, which was too bad. But it was a cheap e-book. I did the, what was that? The Kobo-like amazing sale where you could get all the Discworld

Sara: 9:00

there's, there's a, a humble bundle deal going on right now. I think it'll be going on for another week or so after this podcast is released. Um, unfortunately it's us only, but you can get thirty-eight of the Discworld books for$18 or something, and it's a very good deal if you don't have a lot of the e-books or even if you do have a lot of the e-books, it's still a good deal.

Lilly: 9:23

I, I mean, the deal was fantastic. It's worth it for a little bit of footnote frustration, but definitely, if you're interested, think of that before buying them, uh, or at least on this, this bundle. Good book, though. I, that's kind of redundant. Everyone knows this is a good book. Do I even have to say that out loud?

Sara: 9:41

It's very true. Kat, before we continue on, I do have a question for you. How did you get into Disc world?

Kat: 9:47

I started right at the beginning. My mum turned up one day with copies of the Color of Magic and the Light. Fantastic. And she had picked them up just because of the covers, because of the Josh Kirby covers. And she just thought, well, they look fun. So she handed them over and I read them and loved them. And then I read the Dark Side of the Moon is Strata, and then I read Equal Rights. And then I just read everything in publication order after that, just literally as it came out. So my bookshelf, which I, you know, I love my bookshelf, it had just literally has every single book. They're a completely random collection.'cause some are paperbacks, some are hardbacks, all the art is all different because it's just the art that was on the cover at that time. So they're all just sort of sitting there in there. It's sort of like this bit of twenty-year history just sort of stretched out on my shelf. So, yeah, that's it. I've been, I've been there from, I was there. I was there at the beginning.

Lilly: 10:39

Oh, that's awesome.

Kat: 10:40

Yeah. What about you?

Sara: 10:42

I don't know. I don't remember why I picked up Discworld. I'm sure that it was, I had gone into the bookstore one day looking for a book, read the back of Color of Magic, thought it sounded interesting, and, uh, never looked back. I'm pretty sure that I came to them when I was about like 11 or 12, somewhere in that, in that range. I've been reading them for a long time at this point.

Kat: 11:07

Yeah, I, I think maybe, yeah, I must have been about the same age. I think I was like 13 or something, but yeah, about, about the same.

Lilly: 11:13

Sarah recommended them to me at some point. Uh, I started Color of Magic, bounced off of it very hard, and then made the mistake of asking Sarah not, which book should I read first? No. I asked her, what's your favorite Discworld book? To which she answered Nightwatch. So Nightwatch is actually the first book of Discworld that I read in entirety.

Kat: 11:36

I'm curious about this. Did it make sense

Lilly: 11:38

Yeah, it's fine.

Sara: 11:40

But I did, I, I do think that I led you astray in terms of where to start.

Lilly: 11:46

I mean, I didn't ask you the right question,

Sara: 11:48

That's true too.

Lilly: 11:50

but yeah, I, color of magic just didn't work for young me. I, I don't know, but I was determined to give this series a shot, obviously. I'm glad I did. But yeah, Nightwatch, good book. Weird place to start.

Kat: 12:02

yeah, I think at the time when Color of Magic came out, there was actually quite a lot of fantasy around at that time that was like that,

Lilly: 12:10

Mm mm-Hmm.

Kat: 12:11

so that kind of two slightly oddball characters bounce around the world and do stuff. It was quite contemporary, you know? It just, it didn't feel particularly off the wall really. Although he, he was, he was obviously parodying. He wasn't the only person doing that. You know, there was like Tom Holt and then Piers. The only surname I can bring to my mind is Brosnan, and that's not who I mean. One, here's Anthony. And there were, you know, there was, there was a lot of that sort of stuff around. See, this is why I will always, if you say, what is your favourite book, if that question is coming up, this is why I always say equal rights. It's not because I think it's the best book objectively, it probably isn't the best book, but what it was was the book that really just took all of those fantasy tropes and just went, now let's just throw all that out the window and we'll focus in on these two female characters, which was pretty un uncommon at the time. We'll just centre the entire story around two female characters and we'll let the world sort of unfold from them rather than, here is a big, giant fantasy world and I've put some characters in it that kind of, I'm gonna, I'm going to start with these two characters and it's gonna be very character driven and we'll just see what they do. And they were female characters. And in 2023, that doesn't seem terribly radical. Back in 1990, no wait, it's in 1980 something, isn't it?

Sara: 13:37

I think it is.

Kat: 13:39

Yeah, 19 86, 7. I should know this anyway.

Sara: 13:44

Uh, eighty-seven. You're getting kicked off the podcast.

Kat: 13:53

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Anyway, back in 1987, it wasn't a thing that was terribly common. I, I, I hesitate to say it didn't exist because I just know someone will immediately message me and go, well, your problem is that you haven't read da. I mean, and, and actually, actually now I think about it. Ursula de Guinn did that a little bit.

Lilly: 14:12

but she was also a female author, so it's like, of course ladies are writing lady stuff.

Kat: 14:18

Yeah. At the time it felt very different and radical and like, oh, this is cool. Okay. And then, you know, obviously you get sucked in, don't you? The first one is free and then you just can't give it up after that.

Sara: 14:33

Yep.

Lilly: 14:34

All right, so this is in the City Watch series of Discworld. I probably should have looked up which number it was, but I didn't. Maybe five-ish. Someone might correct me. I don't care too much, how accurate that is.

Kat: 14:47

I did look it up. It's a sixth.

Lilly: 14:48

Alright, thank you. I was actually closer than I thought I would be.

Kat: 14:52

it's the twenty-ninth novel and the sixth Vines novel. It's the 29th novel and the sixth VMEs novel.

Lilly: 14:57

Awesome. Now, Sarah, you have both the US and the UK edition of this book.

Sara: 15:02

I do, and I was looking, like I said, I, I read the e-book, but I got out both of my physical copies because I wanted to check some little vocabulary changes to see if they changed between the two editions. And they do. And I think it's very silly that they remove an E from whiskey and add an E to gray and

Lilly: 15:22

We'll argue about that

Sara: 15:23

We, we can talk about that later. But that led to me looking at the, a description on the back of the book of the US copy, and it says, one moment, sir Sam Vimes is in his old patrolman form, chasing a sweet talking psychopath across the rooftops of Ankh-Morpork the next, he's lying naked in the street having been sent back 30 years, courtesy of a group of time-manipulating monks who won't leave well enough alone. And like, no, that's not, that's not actually, that's not actually what happens. I mean, it's kind of what happens, but I, it was just so not accurate that I was like, how did this actually get on the back of this book? But this was, this was the first time that I realized how explicitly the events of Thief of times affect Vimes, because I had not necessarily picked up on that before.

Kat: 16:16

This is two books after Thief of Time. I think it's our, and, and we know that Terry Pratchett often wrote several books at once, was always writing several books at once. So it's almost certainly the case that there was a bit of overlap, which they came out rough, uh, around similar times. So the lightning strike in here is the kind of the ending, isn't it? Of Thief of time,

Sara: 16:37

Yeah, and, and I think this is chronologically, this is the next book in the, like, quote unquote adult Discworld novels because in between Thief of Time and Nightwatch, we have the last Hero and Morris. Yeah.

Kat: 16:50

well done. You pronounced it correctly. Thank you.

Sara: 16:55

My, my inclination is to say Maurice, so I have to think about it every time.

Kat: 17:00

You know what tripped me up this time was Lord Winder, because in my head it has always been Lord Winder. And of course I realise. There's absolutely no way to tell is there. I my brain read it as Winder the first time I ever came across it. And, and I'm like, oh, I've been reading that wrong for 20 years. Okay. I,

Sara: 17:20

I don't do that with Winder, but the midwife, I always call her content, but it's probably content.

Kat: 17:27

yeah. Yes, because it is,'cause it's miscontent.

Lilly: 17:30

Uh, yes.

Kat: 17:31

like, as in discontent. Do you see She's discontented. Yeah. It, it's a pun

Sara: 17:35

I, I like that. But, but every time I see her name intellectually, I know that I'm mispronouncing it, but I just wanna read it as content

Kat: 17:43

I,

Sara: 17:43

content.

Kat: 17:44

I mean he did all this sort of thing all the time just to annoy people, so, you know. No, no. Just to amuse him, but like, yeah, it's not surprising really.

Lilly: 17:53

I don't think I ever landed on Winder vs. Winder. I'm pretty sure every time it came up it sounded differently in my mind. Nice and chaotic.

Kat: 18:00

Yeah, I, uh, I just, Winder always felt right to me'cause he's this fairly unpleasant character. So the idea of him kind of winding things up worked to me and then it, but yeah, I think apparently, you know, I haven't heard the Stephen Briggs audiobook, but apparently he said Winder as well, so I just gonna have to accept that I was wrong. I'm sorry. It's not as good. Winder was

Sara: 18:26

I've, I've always pronounced it winder in my head, so it's vindication.

Lilly: 18:31

Well, I incorrectly, I. Thought that this book was the first time we actually had a gnome character. We hear about gnomes quite a bit in disc world, and then we see the gnome watchman doing some watchman-ing during the events of this novel. But Sarah corrected me, and in fact, there are other gnomes who clearly did not impress upon my memory at all.

Sara: 18:51

Buggy buggy. Swires is the gnome watchman and he shows up in Jingo.

Lilly: 18:55

was so same guy.

Sara: 18:56

Yeah, I don't actually remember him in Jingo, but the internet tells me that he did show. He did show up there. And there's also a gnome named Swires in the Light. Fantastic. Who may or may not be buggy swires. So this is definitely not the first time we've had a gnome named character.

Kat: 19:12

I feel like, I wanna say unseen, academic, cause there's talk of a gnome, and I think at that point Pratchett was quite keen to make a distinction between gnome and pixie because he'd done all the three men and buggy. Swires is essentially a fecal, right?

Sara: 19:28

Mm-Hmm.

Kat: 19:29

It's certainly more of a fecal character than a, than anything else. And so I think there were, perhaps early on he was kind of categorized in that gnome category, and then later on he kind of went away, oh, hang on, I can't do that anymore because he's clearly not. So the, yeah.

Sara: 19:44

There's definitely an evolution there,

Lilly: 19:46

And the Discworld is always evolving, especially in those early books.

Kat: 19:50

Well, yeah, and then he had this whole thing with Thief of time and here where he's just basically gone. And anyway, all of history changed.

Lilly: 19:58

Don't worry about it, it's fine.

Kat: 19:59

If you were thinking of writing a letter, don't worry about it. It's just because the history books were buggering about with stuff, so, uh, there we go. Everything is different anyway.

Sara: 20:08

which I kind of love. Like what a great way of making sure that it doesn't matter if your continuity is off, who cares?

Kat: 20:15

Yeah.

Lilly: 20:16

Every series more than four books needs history monks.

Kat: 20:20

Yes. Yeah. Oh, there are some time travelers. They're just messing around with stuff. What can I tell you? Yeah.

Sara: 20:26

It just, you know, it happens.

Kat: 20:28

Out every possible trouble that you could be in

Lilly: 20:31

Well, one of the troubles that this book introduces is that Vimes meets his younger self. And I, I, obviously that's not the first time this has ever happened in literature, but I really loved the way that the narration of this book made it very clear that Vimes was the older version, and Sam was the younger version that wasn't consistent in dialogue, which makes sense. But the narration was always like very precise about that, and it made it very easy to understand, and I appreciated it very much.

Kat: 21:01

I,. Yeah, every time I read this, I'm impressed by how not confusing it is.'cause it could have been horrendous and I mean obviously editors will have helped, but I also think that's just peak Terry Pratchett, isn't it? To just keep on top of that and never let the dialogue get confusing when it could be an absolute nightmare. They're literally talking to each other.

Lilly: 21:25

Yeah.

Kat: 21:26

Through whole scenes. Yeah. I mean, it is, it's kind of God level of authoring, isn't it, really? To keep that straight and to keep all the time travel stuff straight.

Lilly: 21:38

Yeah, and it was just like such an elegant solution. He didn't have to spend a lot of time explaining that. It just, that's how it was, and it was very easy to pick up and just go.

Kat: 21:48

Yeah. Yeah. Or the other thing we should say, having mentioned Josh Kirby's, this was the first book that did not have a Josh Kirby cover because Josh Kirby died just before this book came out. So this was the first book to have Paul Kidby's artwork on the front. But Paul could be painted Josh Kirby into the artwork on the, on the original hardback. So he is, he is sort of in there at the back of the picture.

Sara: 22:10

I always feel that our U.S reading experience kind of missed out because none of the paperbacks that I ever read that were US versions or the hardcovers had that art on it.

Kat: 22:21

Well, Kirby or Kidby.

Lilly: 22:25

It's borderline clip art. I'm gonna be honest.

Sara: 22:28

it is. It is borderline clip

Lilly: 22:31

It's not good.

Sara: 22:32

Yeah. So I don't think that art ever made its way over to the U.S in the mass market paperbacks, which is a shame'cause they're both really talented artists and their covers are lovely.

Kat: 22:41

Yeah, that's a shame. Yeah, I mean, I, the Kirby artwork is for all that it wasn't exactly accurate previously, did not accurately depict the characters in any way, shape, or form it, you know, it was iconic. It was just iconic and, and you know, we used to talk about Kirby covers. Oh, this book has a Kirby cover. Okay. It'll be good. I mean, you literally did judge books by their cover if they had Kirby on the cover for a while there. So I remember Terry Pratchett saying a tribute to Josh Kirby after Josh died and kind of saying he, you know, he just wrote Discworld and Josh Kirby made it, you know, kind of thing. Or I am, I'm misquoting horribly. But it was something along those lines. There, there was, you know, that, I do think the fact that he had those covers. Certainly in the UK went a long way to, um, making Discworld so famous and so Well-known. Yeah. Well, I mean this, yeah, see, this is, I'm a chemist. I have PhD in chemistry and I also taught chemistry for a long time. And so I, I would read these books and in every single book there would be a little chemistry bit or pretty much in every book there'd be a little chemistry bit, which I always felt like Terry Patrick was putting in there just to, to please me and the other chemists. Yeah. And here it's Spymold. Spymold is the food taster, and there's a couple of things. It is rumored that if he breathed on the cutlery, it would turn black. I started thinking about that. I'm like, well, Toe pressure hasn't made that up. Like where, where is he going with that? And I, I think that he's alluding to arsenic poisoning because if you consume, because they are, the point about the food taster is he consumes poisons all the time and is therefore immune to all the poisons. And I think what he's referencing there is that the idea that if you take arsenic, you get garlicky breath due to the production of arsine gas on your breath. And I think if you react that with silver, it'll go black or you'll get a black precipitate of silver. So I think, I think that might have been what he was, what he was saying there. And then the other bit is the marzipan smells of almonds.

Lilly: 24:57

Ah, yeah.

Kat: 24:58

So that's definitely a, a chemistry reference because cyanide smells of bitter almonds, or it does to, perhaps not to everybody. It's one of those things that maybe not everyone smells the same way, but it's famous for having that almondy smell. And I, I, I remember, I remember a chemistry teacher and he, uh, he was always very fond to sort of trot out is said, right? If you're outside of chemistry lab and you smell almonds, it's either almonds, probably unlikely, or it's benzaldehyde, which is fairly harmless, or it's hydrogen cyanide. Send someone else in first.

Lilly: 25:33

Very practical advice,

Kat: 25:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Lilly: 25:37

so I did not understand the 4, 4, 7, 8 reference. Does that,

Kat: 25:41

Uh, you know what, I've flagged that up just because I am so curious about this. I would love to know the answer to this. I've seen it discussed a few times and it's never been answered. It's the combination on the safe in the watch house, and it's been that combination for, we are told, it's been that combination for years and it's that combination in the past and it's still that combination in the future. And I just think that it looks so much like a date, right? 4, 4, 7, 8, 4th of April seventy-eight, it looks like a date, right? It's not Rhianna, Pratchett's birthday'cause she's, but her birthday's in December. But it's, it's that age. I, I just really love to know. I wondered if it was something to do with Follett just to bring Follett in, because in this book, uh, Ken Follett Ken Follett won an auction, charity auction to have a character named after him in a Discworld book. And so hence we've got Dr. Follett as the head of the Assassin's Guild. And it's not his birthday. He's older than that. But I wondered if maybe it was his, maybe it's one of his children or something like that. Like, and that's why it's in there. I just, but I'd love to know if anyone out there knows of April, 1978. Who is that? Come on, tell us, tell us. It feels like it can't be an accident. It's not an accident. Surely it's not.

Lilly: 26:54

and the number is on the page. Too much.

Kat: 26:57

Yeah. And twenty-Fifth of May is not an accident. twenty-Fifth of May was Rob Wilkins. Um, Paul Weller's birthday out of wanting to put Paul Weller's birthday in there. So it's like, yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure it's not an accident. Yeah. What is, what is like, why spell out that number? Must be something I'd love to know. I hope you can find out.

Sara: 27:18

You know, I don't think I've ever wondered about that, but I'm going to be wondering about that for the rest of my life now.

Lilly: 27:24

Apparently the winner of Miss World 1996 was born on that day

Kat: 27:30

Oh, well, maybe that was it.

Sara: 27:37

Question answered.

Kat: 27:39

Maybe she was a big Discworld fan and um, yeah.

Lilly: 27:45

And number one song at the time was Matchstick Men and Matchstick Cats and Dogs. I don't, that's all, that's what the internet shared with me. I don't think they were relevant at all though.

Kat: 27:56

If, if that's, that seems, yeah, that seems quite obscure link, but who knows?

Lilly: 28:02

Pratchett does love his foreshadowing though. There are some really excellent line. Well, there's excellent lines in every Discworld book.

Sara: 28:09

I'm pretty sure this whole novel is actually just one excellent line after another To be frank.

Kat: 28:15

Yeah, I mean, I, I mentioned this when we were chatting at the start, but my Kindle version, I am not exaggerating even slightly. It has 200 annotations because every time I pick up this book, I highlight more sections. There are more sections of this book highlighted than not highlighted. I swear. Yes, it's a masterclass. This book.

Lilly: 28:40

says it's gonna be a long day, and of course for him, the day ends up lasting like a week or something. Poor guy.

Kat: 28:49

I, I know.

Lilly: 28:51

But this, this particular quote that you pulled out. Is more foreshadowing for the actual planet and less for both for the book a little bit as well. But our mum says there's going to be trouble soon.

Kat: 29:03

Yeah. Yes. I just, because, so this is Young Sam Vimes talking about politics and changes because we have a, a change of political leader in this book, and it is, you know, you kind of get into that thing where the people in inverted commas are just talking, oh, it'll all be okay once we get rid of the guy in charge and put a different guy in charge. And you just think it was obviously felt relevant at the time. But now it just, it feels even more relevant. Like yes, it's exactly the same thing, you know? And it is that whole kind of, don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again and it's just that, isn't it? It's always like, people always hope that it's gonna be better, it'll be better when the new guy gets voted in. And it really is.

Sara: 29:51

Old boss. Same as the new boss or new boss, same as the old boss.

Lilly: 29:55

it works both ways.

Kat: 29:56

As

Sara: 29:56

It works both ways. Yeah.

Kat: 29:58

either way. That's right. Yeah. And it's that kind of, it's kind of young Sam Vines kind of going, well, our mum says it's all gonna be okay.

Lilly: 30:08

Do we wish?

Kat: 30:10

Mm. Both, uh, UK and America are obviously facing elections this year. Have I got that right? I mean, we, we will probably have a general election in autumn winter, I would've thought so. We are both, we're both kind of facing the same, it's all the same con, I mean, it's, you read Nightwatch and you think it's all the same conversations. People are saying all the same. Oh my God. It's like, Lidgey's is absolutely right. It just comes around again. It's just all the same. I mean, it's a, it's just such a politically relevant book.

Sara: 30:40

And I think that's one of the things that strikes me about Nightwatch, but also about many of the Discworld books in general is how relevant they remain, you know, decades after they were written. Sadly, how relevant they remain sometimes, but yeah, Nightwatch in particular. It does seem like those conversations, they're still happening.

Kat: 30:59

Yeah. I mean, not every book got every single thing, right. I mean, I'm sure we could all pull out bits that maybe have aged better than others, but.

Sara: 31:07

We certainly have.

Kat: 31:09

Yeah. A amazing how some of it is just so, and I think, you know, but I think the thing is, it's Terry Patrick understood people. He just under, he, he obviously was a journalist and had spent his time kind of listening to people and studying people essentially, and, and understanding how people thought and think. And it's like, yeah, it doesn't, it just doesn't change, does it? It's always the same,

Lilly: 31:35

Yeah.

Kat: 31:36

know, it's a slightly different problem, but it's the same behaviour again and again and again. That's why it ages as well as it does because it's like what people will always be people.

Lilly: 31:46

Yes, absolutely. Before we get into the spoiler conversation, usually when we talk about a Discworld novel, we ask the question, when should someone read this book in their Discworld journey? Don't do what I did probably. It's a good book. It still made sense, but you get a lot more of Sam Vime's character. If you read more of the city watch books before this one,

Sara: 32:10

I, yeah, I, I think that you would appreciate his internal struggle between wanting to make the world better and wanting to get back to his family more in this novel. If you have read the other Vimes books and actually know a little bit more about who Vimes is, so I'm sorry that this was the first book that you read based on my recommendation.

Lilly: 32:33

it did the job.

Sara: 32:35

It's true.

Kat: 32:37

I do think if you couldn't make time to read all of them and you know, frankly, what are you doing? It's probably best if you read Guards Guards at least,

Lilly: 32:49

Mm, yes.

Kat: 32:50

because there is this kind of long character arc for Sam Vimes. And we'll probably get to this in a bit, won't we? But I, I do feel that, that there's a point at the end of this book where you feel like Sam Vimes character Arc has not exactly come to an end, but come to a, come to a point where he's done a journey, for want of a better word, from where he starts as this alcoholic broken-down alcoholic to where he is in, in this book and where he ends up at the end of this book and the decisions that he makes at the end of this book. So I think you probably don't need to read all of the, the watch books for this to make sense, but I do think it'd be a good idea to read Guards Guards rather than just jump into this.'cause otherwise I think you're gonna miss that kind of nuance of what has happened to Sam.

Sara: 33:38

Yeah, I think I would agree with that. I mean, you should read all of the City watch books. Just because they're all great, but

Lilly: 33:44

Then you get to meet Carrot who is not in this book hardly at all. And that's a tragedy

Sara: 33:50

it's okay actually.

Kat: 33:53

Yeah, I, yeah, I'm one of those people who has a few problems with Karen, so Yeah. I'm on. Yeah. But anyway, we, let's not, let's not get into that.

Lilly: 34:02

not actually relevant for this book. Yeah.

Sara: 34:04

Yeah.

Kat: 34:04

Yeah. Not really.

Sara: 34:05

But I do think that if you only have limited reading time for Discworld books, like if you could only read four or five, which as you say Kat, what are you doing? What's more important than Discworld? But if you can only read a certain amount, I do think that Nightwatch should be one of those because it's a really thoughtful book. You know, one of my favorites, I, I read it every year, so I, I definitely think it's worth making the effort to get to Nightwatch.

Kat: 34:31

Yeah. It is, it is so masterfully put together. I mean, the, the plotting gives me a headache just. Thinking about it, I have just trying to make sense of it. As a reader, as a writer, I'm like, I could never, I dunno how he did that. I mean, it's just, it's just every single beat is paced perfectly. There's an enormous cast of characters. Massive cast of characters, and even allowing for the fact that, you know, some of them, because you've read other Discworld books, it's an enormous cast of characters including a whole load of new characters who are not really very much in other books, if at all. And yet somehow Pratchett does that thing that he does of making every single character completely distinct from every other character and instantly recognisable just by their speech patterns. Which, I mean, just that alone, I think people don't appreciate how hard that is to do. And you just like, oh yeah, they're fine. I mean, it's just, yeah, I mean he was, he really was a, a genius and. This is Peak Terry Pratchett. So you're right, this is definitely, this should be in, in the kind of this one and Hogfather and actually Thief of Time because the time again is, and the Twist at the end of Thief of Time is just amazing. Like literally a drop of book and stare at the wall for a bit moment. You know, they're the ones, aren't they, that you, you absolutely ought to have on your list somewhere, even if you can't make time for the other 40 books.

Lilly: 36:01

To avoid spoilers, skip to 1 11 50. So women, huh? Uh oh. Cratchit. He does his best. I, I would say this book has several fabulous female characters and then poor Sybil.

Kat: 36:23

This is where I want to talk about the audio, but the new audio book, because I ha I had issues with the female voices.

Lilly: 36:29

Oh, interesting.

Kat: 36:30

Yeah, so, so the narrator is John Colshaw, who is, if people who are listening don't know who John Colshaw is, he's, uh, an Impressionist. He's pretty well known in the uk, but maybe not outside of the uk. He's not. Really an actor. He's known for doing impressions, and he is extremely skilled at impressions, but he's more of a comedian and, and a kind of a, a sketch show person. And his female voices were not good. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I said it. He's they're not. So we have Lady Messerol in this book who is this exotic, mysterious woman. Right. And when I, when I read the book in my head, she's older, but she's not very old. Right. She's, you'd probably put her in her forties perhaps. This idea that she's very elegant and mysterious. She's meant to be from Genoa, which we know from other books is kind of more or less American deep south. So you would put her as maybe an American accent. At least a faint American accent, or I guess maybe some, you know, something faintly, sort of very southern European. But no, John Colshaw for some reason, makes us sound like, uh, lady Bracknell from the importance of being Earnest. Right.

Sara: 37:50

I don't know what she sounds like.

Kat: 37:52

Okay. So you know that, that the very famous phrase is a handbar. You must have heard you ever heard that. That's how she talks though, all the way through. It's a very old, very white upper-class. Dowager voice, Dowager, I'm, I'm mispronouncing that word, but that kind of thing. I can't do it. No,

Lilly: 38:14

Mm-Hmm.

Kat: 38:15

that. Right? And that's how she shot. And it's. It's so wrong because she has this scene where she is clearly flirting with all the men and chatting all the men up, and she's talking like this. And it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. It's just, I was like, oh no, that was, no, that's just wrong. And then Rosie, Palm, which I think did, did, is that a joke that the Americans, Americans are likely to get? Do you? Is that

Lilly: 38:41

It, yeah. Ms. Palmer I think is usually more often used in the American versions of that joke, but it's a very similar dirty joke play on words. Yeah.

Kat: 38:50

So, yeah. I mean, she is supposed to be in the book. She is this very streetwise, sharp, intelligent woman, right? Not posh perhaps, but very, very on the ball, very smart. And the voice in the audiobook is very, um, well, frankly, it sounds quite a lot like Captain Jack Sparrow. She sounds, she sounds like she's drunk the whole time. She's kind of slurring her words and, and talking. Yeah. I'm like, but that, no, Rosie doesn't talk like that, right? No, she's, no, she's, she's smart and sharp and it's just wrong. It just feels wrong. Yeah. And I'm just like, oh, why did you do that? Sandra Batty's voice is okay. That one's, you know, she's the actual, the needle woman. She's all right. But yeah, and I'm like, oh, there's really not very many female characters in this book. This whole book is a lot of male characters. We could have at at least got the ones, the ones that are in it and are important and have big speaking parts. You could have given a bit more thought to what they are supposed to sound like.

Lilly: 39:55

It, it makes them humorous characters when in the novel they're quite, you know, competent and have like really important parts of the plot in a way that we don't always see with female characters in Pratchett books.

Kat: 40:08

Yeah, and I mean, I think this. This book kind of because of the nature of it, it was always gonna be quite male-dominated because I mean, the watchbooks are anyway. And then also you've gone back to a point in time when there weren't women in the watch. So Pratchett couldn't just kind of throw a couple of female characters into the watch house in the past, you know, this was kind of the only way he could write in female characters. And they are really cool. Like Rosie Palmer's a great character, she's very smart. You know, lady Messeroll is a great character and it's like, oh, this is a shame. This is a shame that they, yeah, that they've not been served well. I wanna say a lot of, I'm complaining, but a lot of the voices are great. Sam Vines, his voice is great. And of course, if you are, if you know John Colshaw's work, you start to recognise voices. I made, I made myself a little list actually. You got, um, young Downey sounds like Alan Rickman to me, Which felt, which felt right because it was a bit Professor Snape. Right. So that was that, that kind of sort of, well, he's a bit of an unpleasant character. Lord Windor is Alan Sugar Lord. Alan Sugar. Oh Lord Sugar. Which I don't know if he's a known character, he is a businessman, but he hosts the Apprentice.

Lilly: 41:26

Mm.

Sara: 41:27

Mm-Hmm.

Kat: 41:27

Dr. Follett is David Attenborough. Definitely. And I picked up a few others. I, I'm pretty sure I caught Johnny Vegas in there somewhere. And there was a Boris Johnson at one point for sure. One of the, one of those characters. Yeah. So it's like you could play a sort of a fun game of like, oh, rec, oh, I recognise that voice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Lilly: 41:45

That's awesome. Sarah, you and I disagree on the treatment of Lady Sybil.

Sara: 41:49

We, we do disagree on the treatment of Sybil in this novel in particular.

Lilly: 41:53

Yeah. To me, she is a sexy lamp, which is the idea that you could replace the character with a sexy lamp and it wouldn't change the book at all. Although in this case, I guess she's a pregnant lamp. Yeah. I don't think she even has a line. It's rough.

Kat: 42:06

No, she does.

Lilly: 42:07

Does she have an entire line? One whole line?

Kat: 42:10

Well, she, she's young, civil, says, says a

Lilly: 42:13

Oh, yes, yes,

Kat: 42:15

but also at the end she says, we are naming him Sam, no arguments after the birth. So

Lilly: 42:21

yes.

Kat: 42:21

she's kind of, in fairness, tied up. I'm not literally, but you know, she's, she's quite busy giving birth through this whole story, so I guess.

Sara: 42:29

And, and that's why, I mean, I do agree to a certain extent that we don't, I mean, I agree. We don't see a lot of her because she's pregnant and I.

Lilly: 42:38

And pregnant women aren't allowed in society.

Sara: 42:41

I was gonna follow, I was gonna follow that up with so much of this takes place in the past, so obviously we don't see current Sybil and yeah, maybe she could be replaced with a pregnant lamp and nothing would change much. But I don't think with some of Pratchett's books up until now, you get the sense that the women aren't always fully rounded characters because he just didn't, I don't know, didn't bother or didn't, didn't know how to make them fully rounded, didn't know how to make them present in the story. And I don't think that's the case here, which I think is where you and I disagree.

Lilly: 43:15

No, it's, it's true. The plot makes it impossible for her to be involved in the story. I just think it's deeply ironic that at the end of, was it the Fifth Elephant? Yeah. It ends with Vimes. His big like character moment is promising to try to be a better husband and they're gonna spend more time together. Cut to next book Zero.

Kat: 43:38

But he is desperately trying to get back to her the whole time

Lilly: 43:41

There are several points in this book where he's like, oh, no. In my list of priorities, I forgot about my wife until number five.

Kat: 43:48

other than only one. One. He does that once. He does that once.

Lilly: 43:52

Yeah.

Kat: 43:53

I hear what you're saying.

Lilly: 43:54

And like, yes, it is the plot of the book that did it, but it's still like, that's, it's not a, it's not great.

Sara: 44:02

But I, I actually think that one of the most revealing things about Vimes character in this story is when he has his inner dialogue about how, as much as he loves his wife, as much as he wants to get back to her and get back home, if it meant leaving things when he could have changed them for the better, he would change things for the better. Because that's just so important to him is, is making the world or Ankh-Morpork a better place. So like, I, I think that that's actually a really important struggle in this book is his, his being torn between duty and his wife.

Lilly: 44:42

Absolutely it.

Kat: 44:43

Yeah. And there's the whole thing about the cigarette case, you know, that he need, he needs that connection to Sybil, to, to keep going. I, I hear what you're saying, but I, I feel like it, that it was just necessary for this, in, for this story at this time. I mean, he did do snuff after this, didn't he? Where Sibyl was at a much bigger part to play.

Lilly: 45:01

It's true. It doesn't ruin the book for me. It's just recalling that, yeah, I'll be a better husband. And then very little husbanding actually happens.

Sara: 45:11

He is there when she gives birth.

Lilly: 45:13

Not really

Sara: 45:14

Well, he is told to wait outside, but he is, he is in the house waiting outside.

Kat: 45:19

He goes running across the town naked to get to her. I mean, you know, at Moorpork as well, not the most friendly of places. And he literally runs across the city. Absolutely. Start naked.

Lilly: 45:32

true'cause he has to catch cursor.

Kat: 45:34

No, because he, but he is running to Sibyl in that moment. He's,

Lilly: 45:37

Right, because he thinks Carcer's headed towards her because of the line where Carcer at the beginning says, I can see your house from

Sara: 45:43

Right, but he's worried about Sibyl.

Lilly: 45:45

Oh, of course.

Kat: 45:46

He's trying to get to Sibyl.

Lilly: 45:48

She's a very important pregnant lamp.

Kat: 45:52

Okay.

Lilly: 45:53

Well, speaking of lamp metaphors, lampshading, it's a much more fun one.

Kat: 45:59

Yeah. You know, yeah. I wanted to mention this just because I came across the term lampshading fairly recently and uh, and I just thought it was interesting. I had, I mean, obviously I'm aware of the concept, which is that idea that in a book, if you are writing a story and you know that the logic of what you are writing doesn't really make sense, stroke fit together. Right? You can't get around it. There's no good way to get around it in the narrative. So what you do is you just sort of draw attention to it and some character will say something like, but that doesn't make sense. And you go, I know, but we've gotta move on. Right? And then of course, it's something that you see in books all the time. Like if you read fantasy and science fiction, it comes up all the time. Right. I just not come across the term before. Right. And I think it's just that thing of just you feel critical of the author if they do that and they don't call themselves out, but if they call themselves out on it, you kind of Oh, right, fair enough.

Lilly: 46:53

Yeah.

Kat: 46:54

And project does it quite a lot, but I, I had not come across a word for it before and I came across the word lampshading and then of course I got to the bit where they're trying to explain the, the whole time business of getting vimes back to the present. And Lucy says, oh, great, jellies begin with a single step. And Q says, that's not how it works at all. And as a reader, you are kind of go, no, but that doesn't make any sense with all the things you've said previously either. Like you doesn't, and Lucy goes, I know, but it's a useful lie. Like, there we go. That was, yeah, that's it. He is just done these, done these lovely little bit of lamp shading there. He's just like, yeah, yeah. It doesn't make any sense. Never mind. Let's go.

Lilly: 47:32

Yeah.

Kat: 47:34

And I just, yeah, I just spotted it there and I was just like, oh, I see. Yeah, that's, uh, that's a perfect example. I'm just like going, calling it out in the dialogue, literally call again. Doesn't make any sense. No, no, I know.

Lilly: 47:47

It really does smooth over a lot. Just like having an inconsistency be acknowledged. It's so much easier. Or not just inconsistencies too, but like maybe a character is written to be an asshole and having the text say, yeah, I know they're an asshole. That's on purpose. And it's like, okay, great. Excellent. I can move forward now.

Kat: 48:05

Yeah. I think, you know, as a reader, you just want someone to acknowledge the problem, don't you?

Lilly: 48:10

Mm-Hmm.

Kat: 48:11

I think that's what it is. It's like, and as soon as somebody goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. you're like, all right, fine. I don't have a problem with it anymore.

Lilly: 48:19

Yeah. Alright. Earlier we were talking about how amazingly prescient a lot of the politics in this book are. I do have one, not quibble, but there was something that did not translate well to modern-Day United States. Which is all of the conversation around weapon access, different year, different place, very different vibes, didn't like work great. Just'cause of all the gun control issues we're having.

Kat: 48:46

Yeah, I have seen that rolled out by a couple of people who are pro-gun and that bit where Vine, you know? Yeah.'cause Vines talks about the fact that, you know, banning weapons just means that the bad guys have weapons,

Lilly: 49:01

Mm-Hmm.

Kat: 49:02

people to break the law have weapons and you know, the citizens don't have weapons. And how does that help? For sure. Terry Patchett did not mean that to be applied to a real life situation.

Sara: 49:14

Yeah.

Lilly: 49:15

It's just hard to read a line that's verbatim used by gun nuts and like even, I know it's in a different context. It's fine. Like I can get over it. It's a book, it's okay, but it does make, just make you go oof.

Kat: 49:26

Yeah, it does it, it really does. It kind of, when I got to that, I kind of winced as well because, oh, and he said, I do wonder if he would've written it, if he would write it now, because it doesn't, probably when he wrote it, he just thought it was the sort of observation Sam Vines would make

Lilly: 49:41

Mm-Hmm.

Kat: 49:42

that it's, you know, oh, great idea. If we bad weapons or it'll happen is the bad guys have weapons. Mind you, having said that, I'm just trying to get my timings. I'm trying to think about the times I, I think guns were banned in the uk. I wanna say 19 ninety-four. It was something, it was around then because it was after the Dunblane Massacre. It was a school shooting in the uk and then after that, that's when we got the very tight gun control laws that we have now.

Sara: 50:08

Very sensible.

Lilly: 50:09

Yeah.

Kat: 50:11

And this argument was made in argument against those gun laws, but the politics of the UK being different, we went the way we went and we still have the very strict gun laws that we have. And it didn't cause any of the problems that people threatened that it would, and probably the same case would be in America. But, you know,

Lilly: 50:30

Yeah, it's a fantasy novel. It doesn't have to fit one for one to reality, but I do bring baggage as a reader to stories, and that's one of them.

Kat: 50:38

Totally. I mean, I, it probably is the sort of thing Sam Vines would think. I mean, I think it's tempting to hold Sam Vines up as this hero. He is hero of the story, but he's also, he's, he's also not a nice guy in a lot of ways. Right? I mean, like three or four times he just knocks people out,

Lilly: 50:58

Yeah.

Kat: 50:59

you know?

Lilly: 51:00

There's a lot of knocking people out that doesn't quite work with brain damage, but it's, that's very easy to hand by if it's fantasy book is okay.

Kat: 51:07

Yeah, including his younger self at the, at the end, it just knocks him on head and you just think that he's a guy who's, who's on the streets. He's practical. He does what he has to do. It probably is what he would think,

Lilly: 51:20

Mm-Hmm.

Kat: 51:21

even though it doesn't sit well with, you know, hey, things are now.

Sara: 51:25

You, you, you. I'm not sure if I did, but there's a point, it might be in the fight at the end with Carcer in the graveyard, but there's a a point where he comments that he and Carcer have basically the same like ideology in the sense that they will both do what they want, but the difference between them is that it's Vimes doing it

Lilly: 51:53

Yeah.

Sara: 51:54

when he does it. So like there's, there's that little acknowledgement too that Vimes as much as we love him, as much as he is the hero of the story, he's not necessarily a good person. He tries to be, and that makes a difference. But he doesn't, he doesn't get it right all the time.

Kat: 52:10

No, I mean, I think this is a thing about Vimes, isn't it? The whole kind of key to him is that there's this whole inner beast, which is talked about here, but then obviously it becomes more explicit in Snuff. But the whole point is he knows he's a bit of an asshole. he's always watching himself, right? He, he knows that about himself and he is always watching himself and he's conscious of it, and that's why we like him. I think that's why he's such a good central character, because he is quite, he's got that layer of complication, like he's not a nice guy, but he knows he is not nice and he's always watching himself and stopping himself. There is a moment in Snuff, I think, where Detritus call, I'm, I'm pretty sure I'm thinking of Snuff. No way. I think it's Snuff, but I might have got it wrong. I'm happy to be corrected, but in Detritus calls him out at one point for talking about the trolls as though they're thick and stupid. There's kind of this whole in inner thing with Vimes where he goes, oh my God, that is what I do. That is what I do. And, and know you can, you know, that the kind of, the cogs are all going round in his head and he is realising how problematic that is in that moment and how he needs to, to cut it out. So yeah.

Lilly: 53:23

That sort of self-improvement is sort of a theme that we see through all of Vimes's books. His character is very consistent. And that he's always trying to grow. We see that a lot with racism in some of the earlier novels. You know, when the watch starts accepting,

Sara: 53:37

And Speciesism. Yeah,

Lilly: 53:38

yeah. Sorry, species.

Sara: 53:40

well, racism too, but,

Lilly: 53:42

Yeah. He always wants to be better, which I think does really go a long way for letting him still be the hero despite having flaws.

Sara: 53:50

well, and and I think that that's what makes him a more interesting character than Carrot, for example, like we don't have to talk about Carrot a lot. He's not in this book a lot, but like Carrot is such a nice guy and he doesn't have very many flaws. He's just consistently nice. Whereas I think Vimes is a lot more relatable because he makes mistakes. He is sometimes an asshole. He does his best, but that's not always enough, and that's just more compelling and relatable to me as a reader anyway.

Kat: 54:21

This is, this is my, I mean, like you say, we don't need go on a tangent about Carrot, but this is why I dislike Carrot. I mean, I like him as a character. He is an interesting character, right? But it should not be forgotten that at the end of the second watch book, he just runs somebody through with his sword in cold blood who is not threatening him. And he does it because he know Vines won't do it. Right. And as far as he's concerned, this person has to die. So he puts a sword through them. And you think, yeah, that is the problem with Carrot. He's a nice guy and he believes and he believes that he is right. And there's this kind of awareness that that. Sort of why he shouldn't be in charge. Because if he was, it would be, you know, because he doesn't, because he doesn't question himself, it would go bad very quickly. You know, he's very black and white. He's very, this is the way things have to be. Whereas Vimes is much more kind of gets the grays of the world, and that's why I would much rather trust Vimes than Carrot. Right, because Carrot, you just sort of think Carrot could go wrong so easily. He's a bit of a psychopath. Carrot like a nice one. He's nice. He knows everyone. He's lovely. He's very charming and nice and lovely. But also he would just put a sword through you if he thought you'd done the wrong thing. Right? Whereas Vimes would pull you off to at least have a trial first. I mean, I think, yeah, this is it, but, but you know, that's. That's again, the brilliance of Terry Pratchett's writing. He was trying, trying to contrast those two things. You know, Kara is the traditional hero, and by the way, traditional heroes are quite problematic. Vimes is a very non-traditional hero and full of flaws and all kinds of issues. But he's better because of that, you know, and I think, you know, this was a recurring theme with Terry Pratchett, wasn't it? It was like, everyone can be better, everyone can learn, everyone can do better, everyone can look at their actions and kind of, you know, can chat. And, and I think he was trying to, trying to contrast those two things. It's not the only book where he does it, it's why I see it a bit in Morris as well with all the different kind of characters in, in maim. Not to go off on a tangent there, but you know, you've got, um, Morris and, uh, dark Tan, not Darky. Tan, sorry. And uh, oh, what's the old rat called? It's gone outta my head. What's his name?

Lilly: 56:43

The, the leader, the original leader,

Kat: 56:45

The Outly?

Lilly: 56:46

I don't remember his name, but I remember the character

Kat: 56:49

I, I felt like with that he was really, but I mean, again, when you think actually all these books are written around the same time, he was, perhaps he was playing with these ideas of leadership and different kinds of leaders and the importance of looking at yourself and looking at your actions and choosing the way forward. Recognizing your flaws.

Sara: 57:06

Hammond. Pork.

Kat: 57:07

That's it. Thank you. Book.

Sara: 57:09

Pork was the name. And that must have been

Lilly: 57:11

where we got the um,

Sara: 57:12

The, yeah.

Kat: 57:14

Yeah.

Sara: 57:15

Darktan. Combining the two names.

Kat: 57:18

So, so, yeah, I think, I think that's what he, he does, you know, and he, you see him doing it with veterinary as well. Like veterinary is this very calculating character. But you know, again, in this book, he's giving us an insight into veterinary character and how he got to where he was, and it's just. About him being the absolute best he can possibly be. And even if that means not following the rules and not being cool, which is quite a nice message, right? That'll be, obviously he's an assassin, but it's that kind of thing. It's like, it's more important to be, to be good than to be cool,

Sara: 57:55

I mean, I would argue that veterinary is the epitome of cool. Regardless. I love veterinary, but

Kat: 58:02

but he goes his own way.

Sara: 58:04

he does. Yeah.

Kat: 58:05

And you see it here when he's, he's hated and bullied by the other assassins. They don't like him because he's, you know, he's reading, he's reading books and, and learning and practicing and doing, and they're all prancing around in their black clothes trying to be cool, you know, and he's like destroying the only copies of the books on camouflage because he is, you know, he wants to be the only person that can do it.

Lilly: 58:28

There's a great importance specifically in this book, but there's probably instances of it in all of the Vimes books about having good judgment, about knowing when to break the rules. And I think we see that in both Vimes and Vettanari, which is different from Carcer, right? Because he just breaks the rules all the time because he feels like it. Versus our two examples of good leadership who show good judgment for when you should follow the rules, when you should maliciously follow the rules and when you can break the rules.

Kat: 58:56

Yeah. And he does that with Susan quite, I mean in in hug father as well with Susan and kind of like I specifically told her not to follow me, you know, it's like, yeah. Yes. And I think Karsa here is that very, Karsa is selfish. Self-interested and he just does what he wants to do. And he is the kind of the extension of that concept. Like if someone literally didn't care about anybody, they just were only worried about themselves. You don't eventually get to Karsa. He's, he's a much nastier villain than, you know, even T-Times, straight in Hogfather, because you don't see any kind of redemption in Karsa. He is just broken, you know? Well, he's not even broken, but I mean, actually, maybe that's it. He's not broken.

Lilly: 59:50

Yeah, I, that's something—doesn't. Vimes say at some point. It's horrifying how sane he is. Like you want him to be a madman, but he's not.

Kat: 59:59

He's not, he's, yeah, he's just, yeah, there's that bit at the beginning, isn't he? He's got two. You look into his eyes and he is got two demons and they're just urging each other on. He's just flat out evil, but also manage, you know, and this is that thing, isn't it? Of how truly selfish self-interested people can also sometimes be quite likable. You know, he, he does all right for himself. Cast doesn't, he drops into this city that's sort of 20 years in the past and kind of ends up in a leadership role pretty quick.

Sara: 1:00:26

There's the comment that Carcer is, is basically the Vimes, but inverted. Like he has all, all of Vimes's charisma and, yeah, and, and characteristics except that he uses them for bad ends, whereas Vimes, of course, uses them for the good of the city.

Kat: 1:00:44

Yeah, but I mean, I think as Casser doesn't question himself, he just does what he wants to do in the moment. Whereas Vimes, you know, who watches the Watchmen? Me still, you know, Vimes is constantly watching his own behaviour, which is where I think you, it gets why you need that kind of Guards Guards reference because he is this reformed alcoholic and it all kind of feeds into the fact that he knows. That as soon as he, he can't have one drink because one drink is too many, you know, and it's the same. You can't murder one person because as soon as you've just, no matter how much you, how horrible they are and how much harm they've caused and how much damage they've done, as soon as you do that, you are on this slippery slope and he knows where that leads and he cannot go there, you know? And so he's always watching himself.

Sara: 1:01:39

And there's that lovely quote about bribery and how if you take a bribe, even if it's just a dollar, like everything else is just haggling over price, which is that same kind of concept.

Lilly: 1:01:48

And then there's that quote much later on in the book, Kat, that you pulled out. When we break down, it all breaks down.

Kat: 1:01:55

Yes. So when we break down, it all breaks down. That's just how it works. You can bend it and you can make it hot enough that you can bend it into a circle, but you can't break it because when you break it, it all breaks down until there's nothing unbroken. And so, yeah, that's it. That's the thing. You can bend the rules, but when you have that moment where you consciously choose to break the rules for your own ends because it's what you want in that moment, that's when everything falls apart. And Sam Vimes will never do that, and that is why he's so awesome.

Lilly: 1:02:32

I have a sort of semi-related anecdote. A very, very tenuously, semi-related. In this book, they use Lilac as sort of the symbol of the small group of not-on-purpose, revolutionaries, uh, but Vyme's small group of people who he trusts that ends up fighting with him and several of them dying over the course of this novel. I always shudder and horror hearing about them, attaching sprigs of Lilac to their person because this is just me. My mother-in-law once gave us a bouquet of Lilac out of her garden. It was very lovely and very sweet. We brought it home, put it on the counter, and then teeming off of it comes a cloud of tiny spiders. So we immediately put it outside and no Lilac for us, and I just have that mental image. So every time they're attaching Lilac to themselves, I'm like, don't do it. It's not.

Kat: 1:03:26

Yeah, I mean, I don't, I haven't noticed a lot of spiders living on Lilac, but it probably,'cause it grows around here all the time, may actually more at the beginning of May, but I'm not sure if that's global warming or just, it was convenient for the story. But, um, anyway, it's like more pork, so the conditions are different. But yeah, because there's a bit in the book where they talk about on the battlefield putting carrots, having carrots, don't they?

Lilly: 1:03:49

And that's how they were identifying each other.

Kat: 1:03:52

Yeah. But that, that is a reference to a battle where the Welsh, the kind of the Welsh side used leeks.

Lilly: 1:03:58

Mm.

Kat: 1:03:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's like a real, real historical reference. And then it's kind of, yeah. Okay. Well, carrots, leeks, Lilac, of course now here every year, everyone there, everyone has the Lilac on the 25th of May, which is nice.

Sara: 1:04:13

I wish that I could grow lilac, but we don't get cold enough for it. It needs a frost to bloom. So California lilac is lovely, but not quite the same.

Kat: 1:04:22

The bees like it.

Lilly: 1:04:23

The spiders, our lilac bushes, none of them are lilac. They're all white. They still smell great, but it is kind of funny to me, a non lilac lilac.

Kat: 1:04:33

I've realised randomly that the other book I was trying to remember was not Snuff, but Thud, just to save people writing in. I meant Thud.

Lilly: 1:04:44

There's another really wonderful character we meet in the, uh, back-in-time portion, which is the majority of this novel, Ned Coates, who sort of takes turns being an antagonist and a, uh, comrade for Vimes.

Kat: 1:04:57

Yeah, Coates is interesting. Now Coates was another character. I had a bit of an issue with the voice, not as much as I had with Lady Messeral and Rosie Palm, but now Ned Coates to me, he seems like he's kind of special ops.

Sara: 1:05:12

A little bit. Yeah.

Kat: 1:05:14

Yeah, for want of a better way of putting it. I don't wanna say spy because that kind of gives him a level of cool that he doesn't quite have. But there are these multiple suggestions that he's very trained, he's very dangerous, he's a really nasty fighter. He knows more than he should, you know, so he, there's that kind of underground feel to him. And in the audiobook, his accent is this kind of chirpy, Geordie accent. I'm, I'm afraid, sounds a bit like a character of a kid's TV show. It sounds a bit kind of Postman, pat Fireman Sam,

Lilly: 1:05:47

Uh.

Kat: 1:05:48

which. And I, and I was like, no, no, no, no. That's not how Ned Coates talks. I kind of get it why it's been done, because you've got all these other rough and red, if you tried to make him sound like yet another kind of cockney rough voice, it would be a possible to tell him all apart. Right? It's hard enough as it is, so he kind of had to have a distinctly different voice. So I sort of get it, but it, it is quite hard to take him seriously when every time he starts talking and I won't attempt to do an impression. I've embarrassed myself enough doing Lady Messeroll's voice. It's, yeah, it's kind of like, oh, no.

Lilly: 1:06:29

Maybe it was an affectation to throw people off his trails.

Kat: 1:06:33

Well, I mean, yeah, maybe. I mean, yes. It, it just, it just doesn't quite feel right. I do wanna bring up Ned Coats'cause there's this thing, I know that there is a, a fan theory out there. I've heard about this, that Ned Coats is Sam Vines son from the future back in time.

Sara: 1:06:55

Interesting.

Kat: 1:06:56

Yeah. So he's Sam Junior. Right. But I, I just wanna say,'cause there's a line that Ned Coats says, he says, coppers do what they're told by the men in charge. And it's always like that. Which is why I think he's not a copper. Right. I think he's, this is why I think he's undercover. Right. Because he talks about coppers as though he isn't one. But I also don't think any son of Sam Vines is ever gonna say, coppers do what they're told by the men in charge. That's just, those are just are not words that are coming out of any son of Sam Vines mouth. Right. They're just. No, I just know. So I, I think just got on the basis of that line alone, I think. No, he is obviously something a bit interesting, but he's not, I don't think he's, that he's not tied up who or what Ned Coates is.

Sara: 1:07:41

Well, but he, he also dies in the revolution. I mean, which granted Kiel dies and obviously Vimes is still around because there's the hand-wavy time stuff there. But like,

Lilly: 1:07:55

Corpse swapping

Sara: 1:07:57

yeah, so, so that could in theory happen with Ned Coats too. But when Vimes visits the graveyard, like Coats's grave is one of the seven.

Kat: 1:08:05

Yeah. We don't, we don't ever really find out who or what Ned Coates is. Sadly. I wonder if Terry Pratchett meant to tie that up at some point and just lost track of it somewhere along the line. Yeah. It is a bit of an un unanswered mystery who he is.

Sara: 1:08:19

Yeah, I mean, I guess I always just kind of read him as he was one of the revolutionaries, one of the serious revolutionaries as compared to Reg. Yeah, reg. But I guess there is a little bit of mystery there.

Kat: 1:08:32

Yeah, because he's meant to have come from the same place as John Keel, right?'cause this is a whole, they're from the same, you know, he knows John Keel. So that's how he knows that VMEs is not keel.

Sara: 1:08:41

Yeah. He was day watch instead of night watch.

Kat: 1:08:44

Yeah. Swordfish. It's always swordfish.

Lilly: 1:08:51

Well, shall we end with a conversation about cigarettes?

Kat: 1:08:56

Yeah, the very ending of this book delights me, particularly Mark Burroughs talks about this in his biography and his Pratchett biography talks about Terry Pratchett describing the final scenes of his novels as cigarettes, which he claimed he'd named after American cop shows, where they would sit around smoking and explaining the plot to each other, and then this happened. Oh, and he did that because of this, and you know, that sort of thing. Which, yeah, which to be fair, you also get the end of any kind of classic British murder mystery, English murder, mystery. They all sit around, although it's probably not cigarettes, it's cups of tea, but it's the same thing. Oh, yeah. Poirot is kind of sitting there going, oh, this is what, what? And one story, particularly Poirot actually writes a letter that literally explains everything that's just happened. But yeah. So anyways, cigarettes are these kind of bits at the end where he ties up all the loose ends, explains all the little bits that he was explaining and neatly sorts it all out. And I don't know when he was giving interviews and when he mentioned that, I don't know what the timing is, but I wonder if he was talking about it as he was writing this. Because right at the end of this novel, Vimes literally throws his cigar into the garden of inner city Tranquility, which is a great name, right? How good is that? And it becomes part of the plot, like it, the cigar, everything moves in the garden around the cigar, and so the cigar becomes part of the plot. So he is literally taken that kind of metaphor of, I mean, it's not a cigarette'cause Vimes smoke cigars, but literally taken that metaphor and kind of built it into the story. And then it's like the last two lines of the book. And it's just like, oh. Yeah, it's just ice is lovely. Just that kind of, that ending where he is like, yeah, he heard it on the gravel, which moved and then he went home.

Sara: 1:10:46

It is a a perfect little ending.

Kat: 1:10:48

Yeah, it's brilliant. It's just, it's brilliant. It just works on every level. It's just the perfect ending. It's not often the, the final lines of a book stick in your mind. I don't think, I can't think of many books where that's the case. Like occasionally you'll remember the intro of books for reasons of them being famous, but can you think of any other books where you can remember the,

Lilly: 1:11:08

The Great Gatsby,

Kat: 1:11:09

uh, okay. Yeah.

Lilly: 1:11:10

but that's the only one I can think of.

Kat: 1:11:13

It's, it's not common is it? That a lot, you know, where this is one of those things where it's, you know, vibes Australia, cigar over the wall. It's just absolutely iconic. It's like, yep, that was how you ought to have ended that, and that's how you ended it. Perfect.

Sara: 1:11:28

More evidence of Terry Pratchett's, just brilliance as an author.

Kat: 1:11:31

Absolutely. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's these books that in that are kind of in the middle from the sort of the early two thousands where you're just sort of going, oh, I think everyone should just give up now'cause no will ever write a better book. You know, we should stop trying.

Lilly: 1:11:52

And Sarah, you have a, words are weird for us today.

Sara: 1:11:55

Yeah, I, I have a, words are weird. I don't know if it's so much as words are weird versus hoarding books over from the UK to the US can sometimes be weird. I was reading my ebook, which of course is a US ebook, and it uses whiskey with an E and Grey with an A. And I just wondered whether or not my UK copy had changed it and it did. It has whiskey without the e and grey, with the E,. And I just like, I get that sometimes we have different vocabulary, like language evolves and, and our two Englishes have changed in subtle ways, but sometimes something is so tiny, like I, what's the, what's the point in changing whiskey? The spelling of whiskey and gray.

Kat: 1:12:39

funny because whiskey, we have both spellings here.

Lilly: 1:12:42

Yeah, both spellings are right. Sarah's just crazy

Sara: 1:12:44

No, no, no, no. It's, it's not, it's not that that, um,

Kat: 1:12:48

I wonder why they did that. Because whiskey with an E is Irish whiskey. A whiskey without an E is Scotch whiskey and, and

Sara: 1:12:54

right. That was, that was what I was gonna say. It's, it's different kinds of whiskey. It's not that I'm crazy about it. I just drink a lot of, uh, scotch whiskey.

Lilly: 1:13:03

Correct me when I'm talking about bourbon.

Sara: 1:13:06

No, I just like the spelling without the e better,

Lilly: 1:13:10

Yeah. Which is, yeah. So it's not about accuracy. Don't pretend.

Sara: 1:13:13

it is not, it's not always about accuracy.

Kat: 1:13:16

I mean, I imagine it was just an editor, being an editor probably wasn't it?

Sara: 1:13:21

Yeah. I, I just, I just think it's silly

Lilly: 1:13:23

If it's such a small thing, then why does it bother you so much?

Sara: 1:13:27

because it's silly.

Lilly: 1:13:29

It? No, you have to like make the decision like, okay, we are changing this from British English into American English, and if you start trying to quibble over like what level of edit makes sense, that just gets so overcomplicated. Instead of just saying, yes, we're changing the language from British English into American English. It's so much simpler that way.

Sara: 1:13:49

I mean, I think for me, like if the word means something different yeah, change it. If it doesn't mean, so if it's just a, like a matter of spelling, isn't that so much more effort?

Kat: 1:13:58

Uh, for my day job, I actually, I, I have to edit both British and American documents, so I am quite aware of the quirks. I mean, there are all kinds of odd little things like double L's in traveling. I tell you something that if I tell you this, you will not be able to unsee it. You probably never noticed British, the British English versions. Of the Discworld novels. Pratchett uses single quotes for dialogue. And in the American books, it's double quotes. And, and that's one of those things once you, and, and I mean that is convention. British English tends to use single quotes for dialogue. Not all authors follow that. Some authors will use double quotes anyway, but it just kind of depends what habit you picked up. But, um, once you've seen that, you can't unsee it. It's like, and that's how I just instantly can tell you whether it's an American book or an English-British book because it'll have either, it'll have double quotes if it's American and single quotes. Yeah. There's other things like, uh, yeah, signalling has one L in American English and obviously color. And

Lilly: 1:14:56

I was gonna say the color of magic is in the English ver, or sorry, the American English version.

Kat: 1:15:02

is it spelled Yeah. Without the U?.

Sara: 1:15:04

Yeah.

Lilly: 1:15:05

I don't know. I could see an argument for why change it at all? Let people like experience different versions of the language, but saying, trying to argue that they should only change it halfway is nuts to me.

Kat: 1:15:17

Yeah, it's weird. Another word that comes to crock up for me occasionally is mould. And in British English, regardless of whether you mean fairy stuff on cheese or something that you pour something into to make a model, it is spelled with a U.. And in American English it is just spelled M-O-L-D and I, I remember getting into an argument with with it about a document that was meant for an American audience and they still wanted the U.. They wanted everything else. They wanted everything else, American English, but that one word they were determined would be spelled I like, but why?

Lilly: 1:15:54

Yeah, I think that requires much more justification.

Kat: 1:15:59

Yeah, why that word? But it, for whatever reason it mattered. So it had to be done.

Lilly: 1:16:04

Uh, I think inconsistency would stand out so much more and bother me so much, and then I'd like be paying attention to it every time. And it would take me out of the book.

Sara: 1:16:13

But see, it took.

Lilly: 1:16:16

everything was like, American English

Sara: 1:16:18

but, but like, it made me wonder what it was in the uk. I don't know. I just, words are weird.

Lilly: 1:16:24

words are weird.

Sara: 1:16:25

Translations are weird. The differences between American English and British English is weird. Words are weird. That's all.

Lilly: 1:16:31

Alright.

Kat: 1:16:32

The whiskey one is weird'cause like we have both types of whiskey. Why would you, presumably you can both types in America, can, can you

Sara: 1:16:39

Yeah. But I'm, I think that in the US it's generally spelled with an E,. Like that's just the standard version.

Kat: 1:16:45

even Scotch.

Sara: 1:16:46

I think if you're talking specifically about Scotch whisky, you don't have it. But like if you're talking about whisky in general, like if you don't specify what kind of whisky you usually have the E,, so.

Lilly: 1:16:56

I think it's also like blonde, the only gendered adjective in in our language, and a lot of people just ignore it, even though it's technically correct.

Kat: 1:17:06

Yeah. You know what? I remember learning this one because I at one point thought that B-L-O-N-D-E was just the British English way of spelling it. And then I realised that it's blonde if it's male. If you're talking about a man without the E,, it's blonde without the, and if you're talking about a woman, you put the E on. But because men were almost never described as blondes, I don't ever seen it spelled as the E with the E.. So that's how I thought it was spelled. And then I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. But in American English, it's, there's no E regardless, right.

Lilly: 1:17:43

I, no, I believe it's the same. There's, there's an e if it's describing a woman. Um, just a lot of people don't know that or don't follow it. Even if they do, fiancéis the same as well. So I guess we have two gendered words.

Kat: 1:17:56

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Sara: 1:18:02

Thank you so much for coming on before we let you get back to your evening'cause it's quite late there getting quite late. Would you please tell our listeners where you can be found on the internet, your socials, your latest podcasts?

Kat: 1:18:14

I am probably most easily found on the social media site, formerly known as Twitter, still known as Twitter by most people as Chronicle Flask, because that was the name of my blog. It still exists and I've just stuck with name'cause now everyone knows that's my name. Also on Blue Sky as the same name. I work at Sudapod, the horror podcast. So if you wanna hear me rabbiting on more, you will, you can uh, listen to our episodes. You should do that anyway'cause they're amazing. I'm often hosting there, sometimes narrating, and that's the main thing for me. Really. I kind of just run out of hours in the day really for, for very much else. So I have the occasionally a story, I force a story out of myself that appears somewhere, but it's like one a year. I'm dreadful at like getting them written and then submitting them. So I'm just really bad about doing that. So I'm afraid I haven't got a book out or anything like that. But do listen to Sudapod'cause it's amazing.

Lilly: 1:19:13

Fantastic. Well, thank you again so much for joining us. This has been a fantastic conversation.

Kat: 1:19:17

Yeah. Great. Thank you very much for having me. I've, it's been great. I love, I mean, I will happily come along and talk about Discworld all day until, so thank you very much for letting me do that.

Lilly: 1:19:31

Anytime

Kat: 1:19:31

Yeah.

Sara: 1:19:36

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Lilly: 1:19:40

come disagree with us. We are on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok at FictionFansPod. You can also email us at fictionfanspod. At Gmail.com.

Sara: 1:19:52

If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and follow us wherever your podcasts live.

Lilly: 1:20:00

We also have a Patreon where you can support us and find our show notes and a lot of other nonsense.

Sara: 1:20:06

Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated.

Lilly: 1:20:11

Bye.