text:  Time to pack up my luggage (wouldn't it be nice to have a suitcase like Rincewind's?) and take off for Discworld while the rain and gloom of a January thaw engulf the northern hemisphere.  "Guards!  Guards!" is the eighth book in the Discworld series, in which Captain Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork's Night Watch gives up drinking and gets married (just the opposite of most folks).  I don't read the Discworld novels in order any more, just pick up a favorite and start in.
  
  The blurbs on the back and cover pages compare Pratchett to Charles Dickens (Pratchett is better), Chaucer, "J.R.R. Tolkien with a sharper, more satiric edge," and P.G. Wodehouse.  I think any author who garners comparisons with such wildly disparate writers must be in a category by himself.  Heck, Pratchett IS a category by himself.
  
  So on to Ankh-Morpork where the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren decides, with a little prompting from its Supreme Grand Master, to conjure up a dragon.  The dragon will cause enough death and property damage (including a vegetable stand and a brother-in-law's shiny new carriage) so that when the Supreme Grand Master's nephew rides into the city with his sharp, shiny sword and slays the beast, the grateful citizens will proclaim him king.
  
  This plot works rather well, except that the dragon decides that it wants to be king and cremates its would-be slayer.  Its requirements are simple and traditional:  one well-bred virgin per month, and all of the gold, silver, and jewels in Ankh-Morpork for its hoard. 
  
  The new regime fires Sam Vimes from his job as captain of the Night Watch.  How he wonders, could things get worse?
  
  Well, at least he's not a virgin and no one is talking to him in capital letters.
  