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(P) ISIS Publishing Ltd, 1996; Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 1993; Cover Illustration © Josh Kirby
"great book, bad recording"
All of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series are absolutely great read aloud and Men At Arms is no different - Nigel Planner reads the stories very well with good & distinct differences for each individual character involved.
However the recording here is slow, destroying much of the enjoyment of other novels in the series. Hopefully this is an issue Audible.com will rectify soon. Listen to the sample and decide whether the sound quality is endurable to you before buying. If it is, then Men At Arms is a great and worthy novel to continue the adventures of Sam Vimes, Carrot & the rest of the Night Watch introduced in Guards! Guards!
A story which I am sure I will listen to over and over far into the future!
5/5 for the novel & story - 1/5 for the recording.
"great book but..."
i love all the discworld novels,especially the ones that feature the nightwatch. but the recording on this one sounds off. nigel planer is my favorite reader but this recording is too slow,like a tape that is dragging(making his voice too deep and slightly slow)...or...this is not nigel planer at all. still enjoyable but it does not sound like nigel....i know it shouldn't matter but you get used to the characterizations...
"Good Pratchett novel, good reader, bad recording."
This is another great book with the rest of Pratchett's City Watch books. The reader is also quite good (as British readers almost always are). Unfortunately for the book, the recording quality changes dramatically throughout. There are disconcerting pauses and massive sound quality changes between each of the "chapters" of the book. At first, I thought I was bumping my iPod's skip button but it turned out that the recording has problems.
This is still a good book, and worth reading or listening to, but I would look for a different recording before I got this one, and would recommend actually reading it rather than listening to an audiobook, as I would for all Pratchett books (since they're heavily dependent on wordplay for their humor, and it's hard to get that when listening to the text).
"Brilliant! (as usual)"
Pratchett is my favorite author, bar none. His turns of phrase and deep characterization give you a real sense of being there in all his Discworld novels.
Nigel Planer brings his acting talent full on in all his readings, and gives each character the life that Pratchett intended when he wrote about them.
Any Discworld book is worth listening to. I have them all, and have listened to many more than once. Best purchases I ever made.
Maker/Breaker of all things 'Tech'
"Decent character development, poor audio quality"
I really do like Nigel Planer, he has a decent set of voices, a quick comedic delivery and a qualified narrator. His recording equipment and sound engineer were on holiday for this performance... I'd love to hear it re-recorded with decent equipment
Terry Pratchett delivers another decent and fun-loving book that explains a lot about how characters arrived in the situations they were in for the book "Thud!". (I read/listened out of order.) In this book, the most interesting part was the development and antics of Corporal Carrot. The whodunit aspect was a bit weak in my opinion though as the plot seemed a bit scattered and dry from Pratchett's normal standard. This did not affect my enjoyment but it isn't the best of the series so far.
I'll harp about the audio quality one more time. There are MANY sections of this book where it sounds like the microphone tipped over and fell on the floor, leaving Nigel to read to a muffled sock. Later it would transition roughly to crystal clear again but much quieter than it was when the muffled sound would creep in. This is ongoing throughout the book and most of it is spent trying to understand the words through the muffled and bass-heavy recording. I don't think the sound engineer showed up for work much and the recording gear sounds like it was scrapped from some old AM radio parts.
"Another beauty!"
The team of Terry Pratchett and Nigel Planer score another hit with this audiobook. Terry's audacious and entertaining style coupled with Nigel's incomparable talent in the field of voice is truly magnificent. As always, TP's irreverance is a welcome gale force wind - keep writing the great novels! Nigel Planer has imbued the characters of TP's imagination with such life and personality that I cannot read a DW novel without "hearing" the character in my head!
"Discworld whodunit -"
This one starts out slow, but hang in there through the first 30 minutes & you'll be hooked on a great story. Terry Pratchett weaves a detective mystery, disc-style, about the theft of a potentially equillibrium-upsetting powerful weapon: The Gon.
Carrot, Vimes, and the other lovable characters of The Watch are on the case, even enlisting several non-human new members as crime fighters. The production quality of this book is not good, nor is it Nigel Planer's best verbal effort, but true discworld fans will have to listen anyway...
"My first audio book and best to this point!"
The night watch of Anakh-Morpork has a great task to do, bridge the gap between the races, these include trolls, dwarfs (and adopted humans rasied as dwarfs) and a women (or so cop. Carrot belives but everyone else knows she grows her hair and goes on all fours for three nights of the month). Also someone is tring to kill all the guild leaders with a new wepeon or old one however you want to look at it.
Lots of books lots of time. I love all things Star Wars and fantasy. The Bartimaeus trilogy (or quad) maybe the perfect series. Jonathan Stroud and Douglas Adams are my heroes.
"Die Hard with Dwarves"
Terry Pratchett is a master of comic timing, satire, word play, irony, and tortured metaphor. His books are perfect for audio.
Any Douglas Adams or P. G. Wodehouse. Eoin Colfer tries to match these cats but doesn't really hit the mark.
I love Nigel, he and Simon Jones are the best readers in the world.
I always laugh when listening to Pratchett.
If I had to pick one story arch to follow in the Discworld it would be that of Sam Vimes.
"Planner does Pratchett Justice"
Yes it was very entertaining.
Yes, this was just as good as Guards Guards!
yes, it was laugh out loud funny in places