{"id":1262,"date":"1998-05-05T15:26:55","date_gmt":"1998-05-05T15:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1262"},"modified":"2012-04-25T15:27:41","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T15:27:41","slug":"men-at-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1262","title":{"rendered":"Men at Arms"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>Men at Arms<\/em> by Terry             Pratchett<\/h3>\n<p>Six people attended the discussion of <em>Men at             Arms,<\/em> a fairly recent entry in Pratchett&#8217;s             long-running Discworld series<em>.<\/em> This humorous             fantasy novel is a follow-up to <em>Guards! Guards!,<\/em> which we discussed last year. To confound those who             like to pigeonhole books into single genres, I should             mention that despite the presence of wizards and             dragons, this book&#8217;s plot has strong mystery elements.<\/p>\n<p>Our reactions to this book ranged from &#8220;one of my             favorite all time books&#8221; to &#8220;really good &#8212; I read it             twice&#8221; to &#8220;enjoyed it, but not a great thrill&#8221; to             &#8220;completely boring &#8212; I couldn&#8217;t get past page 60&#8221;.             Those who liked it most had read prior Discworld             novels, so we surmised that some of the background             gleaned<!--more--> from reading the other books increased             appreciation.<\/p>\n<p>There were a lot of nice touches in the book. I             personally enjoyed the surprise appearance of Leonardo             da Vinci, who appears in an awful lot of Reading Group             books. Several people commented favorably on the book&#8217;s             exploration of ethnic relations. There were also             thoughtful insights into the connection between             vocation and duty. The characters were well realized,             especially Corporal Carrot &#8212; a rare good, heroic,             simple character without any apparent dark side. The             humor in the book was compared to the work of Douglas             Adams, Tom Holt, and Piers Anthony.<\/p>\n<p>There were some negative comments. Some folks found the             writing clever but didn&#8217;t find the material             thought-provoking enough for their tastes. Other             complaints were mainly along the lines of &#8220;this humor             is not to my taste&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The majority of our group enjoyed this book, and we             were pleased to learn from the staff of Adventures in             Crime &amp; Space that Pratchett has written several             more &#8220;guards books&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212; A. T. Campbell, III<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett Six people attended the discussion of Men at Arms, a fairly recent entry in Pratchett&#8217;s long-running Discworld series. This humorous fantasy novel is a follow-up to Guards! Guards!, which we discussed last year. To confound those who like to pigeonhole books into single genres, I should mention that despite [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1262"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1264,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions\/1264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}