Night Watch (Pratchett novel)
A time-traveling Vimes confronts his past and a tyrant.
Sir Samuel Vimes, who commands the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, serves as the book's main character.[1] The Locus Poll for best fantasy novel ranked Night Watch second for the year.[1]
Quick Facts
- Author
- Terry Pratchett
- Cover artist
- Paul Kidby
- Language
- English
- Series
- Discworld, 29th novel – 6th City Watch novel (7th story)
- Genre
- Fantasy
- Publisher
- Doubleday
- Published
- 2002
- Preceded by
- The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
Facts from the source article.
Making and release
Pratchett commented that filling the torture chamber with Monty Python's comfy chair "would have been an obscenity".[2] In late 2024 Penguin announced Night Watch would be added to the Penguin Modern Classics range.[1] The British edition's cover was drawn by Paul Kidby, making this the first main-sequence Discworld novel whose cover was not done by Josh Kirby, who had recently died.[3] Kidby remembers that people at the time complained the cover was "too brown".[4]
Pratchett thought Night Watch resembled later Discworld books such as The Fifth Elephant more than early ones like The Colour of Magic, and he said the series had "evolved".[5] Pratchett described the novel's humor as "the humour that comes out of bad situations" and likened it to the comedy in *M*A*S*H*.[5] BBC Radio 4 aired a five-part radio version of the story starting on February 27, 2008, with Philip Jackson voicing Sam Vimes and Carl Prekopp playing the younger Sam.[6]
What the cited sources add
Night Watch won the 2003 Prometheus Award.[7]
References
- Wikipedia, "Night Watch (Pratchett novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Matilda Battersby, "Terry Pratchett's Finest Novel to Become a Penguin Modern Classic", The Bookseller, 2024-11-01 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Night Watch (Pratchett novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Discworld Divinity", SFcrowsnest, 2003 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Night Watch (Pratchett novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Paul Kidby, ""Fantastic fantasy artwork: Night Watch (Discworld) by Paul Kidby"", Fantasy Book Review, 11 October 2011 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Night Watch (Pratchett novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Paul Kidby, ""Fantastic fantasy artwork: Night Watch (Discworld) by Paul Kidby"", Fantasy Book Review, 11 October 2011; Paul Kidby, ""Fantastic fantasy artwork: Night Watch (Discworld) by Paul Kidby"", Fantasy Book Review, 11 October 2011 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Night Watch (Pratchett novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Discworld Divinity", SFcrowsnest, 2003; "Discworld Divinity", SFcrowsnest, 2003 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Night Watch (Pratchett novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Night Watch", BBC iPlayer (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Night Watch (Pratchett novel)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The Locus Index to SF Awards: 2003 Prometheus Awards", Locus; "2003 Locus Awards" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Night Watch (Pratchett novel) (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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