Night Watch recap

While chasing the remorseless killer Carcer over the rooftops during a freak magical storm, Commander Sam Vimes, now Duke of Ankh, with Lady Sybil about to give birth, is thrown roughly thirty years into the past, into the harsh Ankh-Morpork of his youth under the mad tyrant Lord Winder. Carcer arrives too and murders John Keel, the tough, principled sergeant who once trained the young Vimes. To keep history on its rails, Vimes takes Keel's identity and his place, mentoring his own naive younger self and the old Night Watch as the city slides into revolution against Winder's secret police. Vimes leads the men in throwing up barricades to shield ordinary citizens through the worst of the uprising, at the cost of several watchmen's lives. The young assassin Havelock Vetinari removes Winder; the equally poor Lord Snapcase takes over. Vimes hunts down and defeats Carcer, and the History Monks return him to his own time, arriving just as Lady Sybil gives birth to their son. Carcer is brought back to face the law and is hanged.

Previously, in the City Watch books: Sam Vimes rose from the drunken captain of Ankh-Morpork's decayed Night Watch to become Commander of a large, respected City Watch and, through his marriage to Lady Sybil Ramkin, a knight and eventually Duke of Ankh. Over a run of cases he rebuilt the force, opened it to trolls, dwarfs, a werewolf, and a free golem, refused corruption and privilege at every turn, and served the coldly capable Patrician, Lord Vetinari, as his most trusted if most resentful instrument of the law, including a turn as reluctant diplomat abroad in Uberwald. As this book opens, Vimes is the settled, powerful head of the Watch, and Lady Sybil is expecting their first child.

Commander Vimes, now Duke of Ankh and head of the City Watch, is hunting a gleefully murderous criminal named Carcer across the rooftops of Ankh-Morpork. During a violent magical storm the pursuit goes wrong, and Vimes and Carcer are both hurled back in time some thirty years, into the grimmer city of Vimes's own youth, on the eve of a revolution, where a young Sam Vimes is just starting out as a watchman.

Stranded in the past as Sergeant John Keel, Vimes shepherds his younger self and the old Night Watch through the People's Revolution against Lord Winder's regime and its torturing secret police under Findthee Swing. He organizes the barricades of Treacle Mine Road to protect ordinary people rather than to seize power, holding a corner of the city through the worst of the fighting; several good watchmen die there, the men Vimes will spend the rest of his life quietly commemorating. Winder is assassinated by the young Assassin Havelock Vetinari, and the equally poor ruler Lord Snapcase replaces him, so the revolution changes little in the end. Vimes finally corners and beats Carcer. The History Monks, led by the sweeper Lu-Tze, set the timeline right and return Vimes to the present, where he arrives just in time for the birth of his son, Young Sam. Carcer is dragged back to the present alongside him, tried, and hanged, Vimes refusing to simply murder him and insisting on the law. Afterward Vimes lays flowers at the graves of the watchmen who fell at the barricades.