Men at Arms – Josh Kirby Paperback – Letterbox Edition

The City Watch needs men. What it has got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-constable Cuddy (really a dwarf), Lance-constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-constable Angua (a woman, most of the time) and Corporal Nobbs (whose paperwork is a matter of opinion). Captain Sam Vimes is supposed to be leaving. He is getting married to Lady Sybil. Retirement looks almost possible. Ankh-Morpork has other plans.

Someone has unearthed a device that does not belong on the Disc: a gonne, a weapon that makes killing easy and thinking optional. Around it gather old conspiracies, a sword in a stone, and the kind of people who think a lost king would tidy the streets. Murders stop looking random. Dwarfs and trolls remember why they hate each other. Carrot keeps quoting the law as if the law still applied. Angua keeps a secret that howls. Cuddy and Detritus learn, painfully, that a badge does not cancel a thousand years of grievance.

First published in 1993, Men at Arms is Discworld novel 15 and the second City Watch book, after Guards! Guards!. It is the novel where the Watch becomes a proper force: messy, mixed, and suddenly responsible. You can read it on its own. It is sharper if you already know Vimes, Carrot and the smell of the river.

This new Letterbox paperback from Penguin presents Josh Kirby’s original cover. The Watch on the shelf as Kirby first painted them: crowded, colourful and one bad idea away from disaster.

• Discworld novel 15
• City Watch book 2
• Publisher: Penguin
• Cover artist: Josh Kirby
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 432
• Size: approx. 198 mm × 128 mm × 23 mm