First Watch is a buddy cop movie in a high fantasy setting, where our two comically mismatched partners (a wet-behind-the-ears human and a grizzled veteran dwarf) have to find a way to get along and solve an increasingly complicated mystery in an early-modern city riven by factionalism and peopled by elves, orcs, mages, humans and dwarves. The premise would have sold me on this book immediately… if it was 1988 and Guards! Guards! By Sir Terry Pratchett didn’t exist. Unfortunately for Dale Lucas, Pratchett’s […]
Watered Down Pratchett Doing Columbo
Fifth Ward: First Watch is pretty standard in a lot of ways. It’s a standard fantasy story of the sort which largely takes place in a vaguely medieval city in which a variety of difference races interact including humans, orcs, elves, and dwarves. It’s also a standard buddy cop story in which the naive young trainee is paired with the gruff experienced veterans, they get on each other’s nerves a lot, but eventually through a series of trials become friends and partners. As is not […]
From prisoner to watchman seems like a lateral move
Rem, a human male in his early- to mid-20s, wakes up in a jail cell, barely able to recall the drunken antics of the previous night. Given that he can’t afford to buy himself out of whatever it was he did the night before, he impulsively volunteers to join the city watch. Within a few short hours, Rem is out on his first patrol in Yenara, a city he barely knows. Rem is clever and good with a sword, and he has no trouble learning […]