It is incredibly hard to choose a favourite Discworld novel. It’s like choosing a favourite ice-cream (what, only one?!). But if forced to choose it might well be Men at Arms. I have a suspicion I have said the same thing about previous novels in the Discworld series, but I am too lazy to go back and check, and it wouldn’t invalidate the choice in any event.

Men at Arms opens with Edward D’Eath, an assassin becoming convinced that the restoration of the monarchy will cure Ankh-Morpork of its various problems, and restore his family to their rightful place in its heirarchy. He discovers after a suspiciously brief and cursory amount of research that Corporal Carrot Ironfoundersson, recent recruit to the City Watch, is the rightful heir to the AM throne. He charts a course for the restoration of the monarchy by plotting to make the Patriarch deeply unpopular, assuming that the populace will want the intervention of a fairy-tale king to right all the wrongs.

You might reasonably expect this plot line to be central to the novel, but it dwindles away rather quickly, or rather fades into the background, and only comes back when ends need tidying away. I think this is because Pratchett’s real interest is in the men and women of the Watch. Sam Vimes is preparing for his marriage to Sybil and his subsequent retirement from police work, while at the same time dealing with the new recruits to the Watch: Cuddy (dwarf), Detritus (troll), and Angua (female, and we soon discover, also a werewolf). Several murders follow swiftly on the back of D’Eath’s discovery of Carrot’s ancestry, and a standard police procedural begins to unfold, albeit in the bizarre and dangerous setting of Ankh-Morpork. Vimes eventually works out from a trail of clues that D‘Eath has stolen a gun (‘gonne’), Discworld’s first firearm, from the Assassins’ Guild. This being Discworld, this is no ordinary gun – it seems to have a personality all of its own. The investigation’s conclusion is revealed with a flair that suggests Pratchett could have made a lively writing detective novels had he ever tired of Discworld.

So while Vimes and Sybil are eventually married, Vimes’ reluctant plans to retire are foiled as he is appointed Commander of the Watch, to all intents and purposes his old job with a new rank. The temporary changes to the Watch that Vimes and Carrot have improvised during the course of the investigation are made permanent, and by the end of the novel it is on the path to becoming the formidable force that keeps the peace in the world’s most anarchic city.

The debate about the best segment of Discworld novels and the best place to start will always crop up whenever Pratchett fans convene, and of course it doesn’t have a right answer, but if you haven’t read Pratchett before and are worried that the novels might be a little childish (they are, but in the best possible way) then Men at Arms might be the key to a lifetime of wonderful novels.