In the second part of\u00c2\u00a0Guards! Guards!<\/i>, Carrot heads for the Night Watch, and the Supreme Grand Master gets what he wants\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 sort of. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Carrot<\/b><\/p>\n
I feel like Carrot is the next in the line of a procession of\u00c2\u00a0Discworld<\/i> characters who resemble one another. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part Twoflower, part Mort, part Teppic\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a motif that Pratchett likes to explore. We are often faced with a character who is na\u00c3\u00afve and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153innocent\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in terms of how experienced they are. I think Carrot is that to a T, which is why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so thankful that the dwarfs are a part of this. THEY MAKE HIS CHARACTER SO MUCH BETTER.<\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just so much to like here, and I think the main reason I enjoyed this as much as I did is because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so\u00c2\u00a0nice<\/i>. The dwarfs are so genuine in their love for their son (their adopted son, I should say) that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s refreshing to see Pratchett not make a joke out of it. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly some toying with existing fantasy tropes going on here, particularly the idea of a human raised by a non-human species and being sent out into the world. But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a thoughtfulness to that approach. Carrot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents clearly adore their son and want the best for him, which in this case includes the chance for him to have human companions. Given that the dwarfs rarely interact with humans, I understood their reluctance to keep him around without ever addressing his actual origin.<\/p>\n
And so Carrot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father has to not only tell Carrot that he was adopted, but that he was found near a wagon burned out by bandits, who most likely killed his entire family. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t done with any cruelty in mind, though I\u00c2\u00a0was<\/i> fascinated by the little details about dwarf culture, such as courting or their expectations of gender. (A single pronoun to refer to all unnamed dwarfs in the third person! All of them have facial hair and GENDER IS MORE OR LESS OPTIONAL. THIS IS SO RAD.) In the end, these people want Carrot to have the best possible life, and they worry that staying in the mines forever will prevent that. Now, I was thankful that my parents told me I was adopted at a very young age. (It was also entirely necessary because there was absolutely no physical similarity and we were curious little shits; we would have figured it out very quickly.)\u00c2\u00a0But Carrot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parent didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do this, so his reaction is\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, expected. A lot of denial. A quiet sadness. However, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this\u00c2\u00a0resilience<\/i> within Carrot that I like, and I think it comes from the fact that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inherently a trusting person. That does worry me, of course, because Ankh-Morpork is not the sort of place for people like Carrot. Since he was raised by dwarfs, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got a literal-mindedness that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t very common where he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going. He fiercely believes what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s told because, aside from his adoption,\u00c2\u00a0he has never been lied to<\/i>. Which means that\u00c2\u00a0this<\/i> is going to be an interesting development:<\/p>\n Perhaps Varneshi should have recalled that, in the whole of Carrot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life, no one had ever really lied to him or given him an instruction that he wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t meant to take quite literally. Carrot solemnly took the book. It would never have occurred to him, if he was going to be an officer of the Watch, to be less than a good one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So what does that mean for Captain Vimes? I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine someone more opposed to everything that Carrot is than him. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also curious to learn more about what the Night Watch actually\u00c2\u00a0is<\/i> these days. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that disturbing moment where the guard at the gate to Ankh-Morpork asks Carrot what he did to be put in the Night Watch. OH NO, Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL. Which\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 what the hell did\u00c2\u00a0Vimes<\/i> do to be put there?<\/p>\n The Supreme Grand Master<\/b><\/p>\n Oh my god, this section has a whole new meaning, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Right, fine, okay,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said wearily. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to do it, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to do it. If we get a dragon six inches long we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll\u00c2\u00a0all<\/i> know the reason why. Won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we, Brother Plasterer.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n WELL.\u00c2\u00a0WELL<\/i>. NOW WE KNOW THE REASON FOR WHAT EVENTUALLY HAPPENS. The Grand Master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s impatience created an unexpected outcome.<\/p>\n The Dragon of Ankh-Morpork<\/b><\/p>\n It was a most unusual death. No one else had died like that for hundreds of years.<\/p>\n The stone wall behind him glowed cherry red with heat, which gradually faded into darkness.<\/p>\n He was the first to see the Ankh-Morpork dragon. He derived little comfort from knowing this, however, because he was dead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n HE\u00c2\u00a0BECAME<\/i> A DRAGON. Holy shit, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know what to say about this! Obviously, this twist wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even remotely on my radar, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m VERY INTERESTED to see how this is going to unfold. Where is the Grand Master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body? Did only his consciousness travel to a dragon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body? Did he\u00c2\u00a0literally<\/i> turn into one? Can he turn back? Is he just going to burn the entire city to the ground in anger? WILL WE GET MORE CAMEOS WITH DEATH, BECAUSE\u00c2\u00a0YES PLEASE<\/i>.<\/p>\n I honestly thought we wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see a dragon until much, much later. This is FANTASTIC.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WTdjDc03I2w<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a> I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans! In the second part of\u00c2\u00a0Guards! Guards!, Carrot heads for the Night Watch, and the Supreme Grand Master gets what he wants\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 sort of. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[486,463,248],"class_list":["post-3101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-guards-guards","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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