Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

There are a few drawbacks of reading books out of order. There are fewer than average drawbacks of reading Discworld books out of order. But I found the first and foremost to be character development. I am so used to viewing a person/creature to be a certain way – the order of things, to be precise. Then we meet them in the before time, a time when their character is still being moulded to what they later become.
I somehow missed reading the first city watch book before, and meeting a drunken unworthy Sam Vines was quite sad. he is beaten down by the new rules in the city, and the Patrician is sure he is handling things quite well in his way. A man who thinks he is a dwarf has been sent to be part of the Watch, a worthy pursuit according to all miles away from the city. Within the city, however, the City Watch are but a joke.
The clash between the idealist and a man coming out of a drunken haze to measure his self-worth is what drives the story. There is the dragon, of course. The dragon would not want to be forgotten as a side note. There is a lot of retrospection hidden behind some hilariously clever words.
Like many of the Discworld series, I kept giggling at things intermittently. This was less risque than some of the others and had a very eclectic cast at their weirdest. There was bonding and fighting, and I think my review is not a complete five stars solely for my disappointment with Sam Vines and his behaviour!
If you do not know of Discworld and everything that it stands for and still find this review interesting, then I think this is a good place to start. The City Watch sub-series is quite great on its own, and the overarching Discworld series works in order, but even read out of order, it is highly entertaining. It is a very well-done type of humour where something in-your-face is not as funny as a subtle throwaway remark someone makes.
This is a reprint, and I hope a whole new audience decides to give this series a shout. I have a few more left, and then I will be done with the books I have on hand.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading of this book and others by the author.