Drawings

Terry Pratchett's eighth novel Guards! Guards! (1989) opened Discworld's popular "Ankh-Morpork City Watch" police-procedural comic fantasies. Now Captain Vimes and his motley watchmen go down those mean streets again in this graphic adaptation, assisted in their enquiries by two of the usual Pratchett Gang suspects: illustrator Graham Higgins, who drew the Mort comic, and adaptor Stephen Briggs, who condenses Discworld into theatre scripts.

Fans will know the story by heart. Alcoholic Vimes, corpulent coward Sergeant Colon and barely human runt Nobby are joined by the huge, innocent new Watch recruit Carrot (a dwarf by adoption), as Ankh-Morpork city enters a reign of terror. There's a ravaging dragon about, whose flame doesn't just toast people but vaporises them. Behind the dragon are its summoners, those hilariously seedy ritualists the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night. Behind the Brethren... but that would be telling.

Guards! Guards! is a substantial novel with a serpentine plot; boiling it down to 122 pages of speech balloons and glossy colour art must have been daunting. Some favourite Pratchett lines and running gags were thrown to the wolves, but the streamlined story still works well, and Higgins' quirky artwork adds a new dimension. Wickedly funny details lurk in street and crowd scene backgrounds. Eccentrics like Lady Sybil Ramkin, the "statueskew" dragon breeder, would be easy to turn into caricatures but are given a proper comic dignity.

A highly enjoyable read--but funnier if you know the original, where Pratchett had room to give his characters more depth. --David Langford

Josh Kirby's long-standing collaboration with Terry Pratchett, author of the phenomenally successful Discworld novels, has earned him rare distinction in the fantasy art genre. Some of the very best Discworld paintings are featured in this portfolio, in addition to a selection from children's books. Includes artworks featuring such classic Discworld characters as Eric the Demonologist, Death, and Luggage, The Josh Kirby Discworld Portfolio is a must for any fan of Terry Pratchett's fiction and Josh Kirby's artwork.

Terry Pratchett's incredible Discworld, floating through space on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle, supports some of the most popular characters ever imagined in the world of fantasy fiction.

But the Discworld people are real, even if their world is a little... fantastic. Readers have their favourites and debates rage as to exactly how they really look.

Now they're here, warts (except in the case of Granny Weatherwax) and all. Terry Pratchett and artist Paul Kidby have got together to imagine everyone, from Rincewind the incompetent wizard to Greebo the rather human cat, in sketches and fabulous full-colour portraits.

These are the Discworld people - REAL!

In THE ART OF DISCWORLD, Terry Pratchett takes us on a guided tour of the Discworld, courtesy of his favourite Discworld artist, Paul Kidby. Following on from THE LAST HERO, THE ART OF DISCWORLD is a lavish 112-page large format, sumptuously illustrated look at all things Discworldian. Terry Pratchett provides the written descriptions while Paul Kidby illustrates the world that has made Pratchett one of the best-selling authors of all time. Here you will find favourites old and new: the City Watch, including Vimes, Carrot and Angua, the three witches - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick - and the denizens of the Unseen University Library, not forgetting the Librarian, of course: they're all here in sumptuous colour, together with the places: Ankh-Morpork, Lancre, Uberwald and more ...No Discworld fan will want to be without this beautiful gift book.