Terry Pratchett's Guards, Guards!

One has to appreciate Terry Pratchett's Discworld series for what they are, which is to say, very enjoyable pieces of fluff, that are sufficiently long to last you through a trans-atlantic flight, and sufficiently involved that you actually care what happens to the characters (more than you care about your neighbour's discomfort, seeing how you are hogging the armrest between your seats). After Agatha Christie, Pratchett is by far the most satisfying airplane author. Between pop culture references transplanted into his own private absurdist dream and a few digs at modern fantasy fiction, you won't notice that bad Adam Sandler movie either.

I confess that my initial impression of Discworld books was far from favourable: it began with Soul Music. I was a little too young for the 80s music references, and the little book toppled over under the weight of unfunny bland prose. Some years later it was explained to me that to enjoy these books one needed to Really Get the pop references: enter Shakespeare. The next batch of Pratchett books I've tried was about witches, walking forests, and similar macbethian trinkets. It was funny; it was rousing; it was imminently forgettable. As a rule, these books follow one sub-stratum of the world: for example they can be book about witches or books about Rincewind.

So what about this particular Discworld nugget? Well, it is a book about Ankh-Morpork guards. Enter Carrot, the earstwhile dwarf, err, human who grew up as dwarf and has as much sense of humour as one. He comes to a large city and joins the Nightwatch, stunning its colourful placid members and its resigned though competent Captain. Havoc ensues. The book is a hodge-podge of jokes based on stereotypes of a simple lad coming to a large city, and a nice simple nobody possibly being a king. It is also about a competent but indifferent nobody waking up from his complacency and performing above and beyond expectation. And, oh, the dwarf jokes. And they are head and shoulders above those of Peter Jackson.