Guards! Guards! was published by Victor Gollancz in 1989. It is the eighth Discworld novel and the first in what became the City Watch subseries — the strand that would produce Pratchett’s finest work and his most enduring character: Samuel Vimes, Captain of the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch.
When the novel opens, the Night Watch consists of three men: Captain Vimes (an alcoholic who has given up), Sergeant Fred Colon (a man of immense mediocrity), and Corporal Nobby Nobbs (who carries a signed document certifying him as human, the need for which tells you everything). Into this ruin arrives Carrot Ironfoundersson, a six-foot-six dwarf (adopted) who has memorized the city’s laws and intends to enforce them — an act so radical in Ankh-Morpork that it constitutes a revolution.
Meanwhile, a secret society of disgruntled shopkeepers has summoned a dragon to terrorize the city so they can install a puppet king who will restore “proper order.” The dragon, being a dragon, has its own plans.
The novel’s genius is the way it uses the fantasy setup (dragon, secret society, lost heir to the throne) to examine real questions about power, policing, and consent. Vimes’s central insight — that the law exists to protect the powerless from the powerful, not the other way around — becomes the moral engine of the entire Watch subseries. His recovery from alcoholism, his relationship with Lady Sybil Ramkin (an aristocrat who breeds swamp dragons), and his stubborn insistence that everyone is equal before the law regardless of species drive eight subsequent novels of increasing ambition.
Collecting Guards! Guards!
First edition (Victor Gollancz, London, 1989): Hardcover, dust jacket by Josh Kirby.
Market values:
- First edition in fine dust jacket: $200–$500
- Signed first edition: $500–$1,200
- Without jacket: $40–$80
- First Corgi paperback (1990): $5–$15
The Watch novels command the highest prices in the Discworld market after The Colour of Magic, reflecting both their literary quality and their popularity as entry points to the series.