I was sold on Discworld with the first novel I picked up (Mort). Instead of continuing on with that series within a series, I moved onto Equal Rites where I met my love Granny Weatherwax and now I'm here, with the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Pratchett was an amazing satirist and humor writer and the world is significantly poorer now that he has passed. It's a shame it took me so long to see this.

In the night time streets of Ankh-Morpork caution is an absolute. There is no such thing as moderately cautious. You are either very cautious, or you are dead. You might be walking around and breathing, but you’re dead, just the same.

I think that I know the most about the City Watch series through word-of-mouth. It's not even featured in this book, but the Vimes "boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness" is a popular description of how much money it costs to be poor. It's true and he should say it. Because of this, I'm predisposed to like him as a character before opening the book at all. And I did! But it turns out that Carrot is the one to surprise me in the end.

It’s a terrible thing to be nearly sixteen and the wrong species.
“We didn’t like to say so before, son,” said his father. “We thought you’d grow out of it, see.”
“Grow out of what?” said Carrot.
“Growing."

Carrot is a Big Boy trying to be a Good Man, whatever that is, considering he thought for sixteen years that he was just an overly large dwarf. I love when authors work with characters whose cultures do not employ metaphors or sarcasm, because it brings such joyful shenanigans when they interact with other people.

Carrot volunteers for the City Watch, determined to do as his father asks: to live among "his people" and find his place in the world. The Watch, unfortunately, has fallen into laziness and vague corruption under Ankh-Morpork's dictator's venerable gaze (he likes it better that way). Guards! Guards! is a new-old take on a surprisingly talented rookie (Carrot) paired with the alcoholic, cynical veteran (Vimes). The plot revolves around unregistered magic being utilized by the world's Most Pathetic Cult, resulting in a big ass Traditional Dragon popping up to terrify (almost everyone) or delight (Lady Ramkin, a purveyor of designer pet swamp dragons). Captain of the Watch, Sam Vimes, is in the thick of it, bewildered and staggering towards answers.

"Listen, if anyone ever sets fire to this city, it’s going to be me."

Vimes solves the case almost in spite of himself, though a series of shenanigans including a dragon king, the Librarian and philosophical discussions of human sacrifices. But in the end, there's a triumph of sorts and Vimes is relieved from his history of being Brought Low By a Woman by realizing how high the right woman could take him.

And then it arose and struck Vimes that, in her own special category, she was quite beautiful; this was the category of all the women, in his entire life, who had ever thought he was worth smiling at. She couldn’t do worse, but then, he couldn’t do better. So maybe it balanced out. She wasn’t getting any younger but then, who was? And she had style and money and common-sense and self-assurance and all the things that he didn’t, and she had opened her heart, and if you let her she could engulf you; the woman was a city.

And eventually, under siege, you did what Ankh-Morpork had always done—unbar the gates, let the conquerors in, and make them your own.