"Men at Arms" by Terry Pratchett

Plot summary: Someone who wants Ankh-Morpork to have a king again steals The Gonne from the Assassins' Guild museum and is now at large. Meanwhile, the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch (predecessor to the City Watch, which is established in this book) has obtained some new people, including many of the more important characters from later books. And then the clowns get involved.

Specifically, I'm pretty sure the new Watchpeople are (future) Captain Angua and (future) Constable Detritus. And possibly some others too, but those are the two I remember.

The Gonne is basically a repeating rifle, made by Leonard of Quirm (who's essentially Discworld Leonardo da Vinci) and ordered to be destroyed by Lord Vetinari (which, spoiler alert, it wasn't). And which is |sentient, jealous of its position as THE Gonne, capable of mostly possessing people, and highly homicidal|. Not a good combination for the world's sole gunpowder weapon.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for crude humor, swearing, indecency, and graphic violence. It has a straightforward enough plot that it would adapt fairly well to a videogame format.

3 stars.

Favorite lines:

    Vimes's pillow was cold and hard. He felt it gingerly. It was cold and hard because it was not a pillow but a table.

    Page 165.

    ...Zorgo the Retrophrenologist*

    *It works like this. Phrenology, as everyone knows, is a way of reading someone's character, aptitude and abilities by examining the bumps on their head. Therefore--according to the kind of logical thinking that characterizes the Ankh-Morpork mind--it should be possible to mould someone's character by giving them carefully graded bumps in all the right places.

    Page 168.

    The whole nose business looked like a conundrum wrapped up in an enigma, or at least in Sergeant Colon's handwriting, which was pretty much the same thing.

    Pages 190-191. 

 

Appearances of Death count: 15.

 

(Endnote: I have a sneaking suspicion that The Gonne's |homicidal possession abilities| are at least partially a joke on the common saying that |guns don't shoot themselves. Because this one| literally does.)