Snuff discussion

Terry Pratchett is one of the most consistently 'value for money' author writing at the moment. And with 'Snuff' he has done it again.

Commander Vimes takes his family to the countryside for a holiday, I'm sure that it was his idea and nothing to do with Lady Sybil's little chat with Lord Vetinarii at all.

However as we all know, the countryside can be a very dangerous place and it isn't long before Vimes finds the first dead body.
But is it murder or not? goblins are vermin not people, so it is more like pest control than murder, isn't it?
Between a bolshie blacksmith who wants to kill Vimes for being 'a nob'' and the local gentry who despise him for being 'common' Vimes finds the time to educate the local policeman in his duties, encourage his son's pursuit of an education in the wonderful world of poo, and bring a murderer to justice.
Add in side stories involving the rest of the City Watch and you have a very funny book indeed. And even Nobby Nobbs finds true love !!

Wishing for a "like" button! Fantastic book and I love the rest of the series.

A world away from his best, this book was quite disappointing. There were fleeting moments that had me chuckling of course(this is Pratchett after all), but most of the time it felt like more of a slog, if not an outright chore, to get through it.

I was thinking while reading it(yes, that's how much my mind was wandering) about just why I was struggling and came to the conclusion that 'I simply miss Discworld'. What I mean by that is that i've always really seen the Discworld series as being 'Anhk-Morpork' and all it's wonderful, hilarious characters. And that's why I didn't enjoy it that much. This book has the odd few recognizable Discworld characters, but primarily it's really just Vimes and a few odd also-rans passing through. It also isn't set in Anhk-Morpork, which, when he's written outside of Morpork in the past, I never can quite get my head around. Why create a wonderful city populated with wonderful characters that clearly your readership loves dearly, and then ditch them all(nearly) and set the story somewhere else?

Makes no sense to me.

Having said all that, no book by Terry Pratchett is ever terrible and therefore this doesn't prove to be terrible either.

It just isn't anywhere near his best.

Just finished it! LOVED it. This author consistently makes me laugh.

I am a dyed in the wool pTerry fan and have to admit that this is not one of his best books. It is, however, a return to form that has been missing in the last few and I loved it.

Sam Vimes is the ultimate city dweller so is totally out of his depth in the country, most of which he now owns. Give him the possibility of a crime and he is back on terra cognita, even if his approaches are alien to all. I love the way that his son is developing character in his own right, as is his wife and, above all, Willikins who turns out to be a very dark piece of characterisation.

This is a book about alienation and the ease with which society can consider individuals, groups or races subhuman or non-human and the results of that thought process. It is much satirical than the belly laughs of earlier Ankh Morpork and is the fruit of the seeds that were sown in Unseen Academicals

It's a fun read, but it seems ... muffled, somehow, like various plot threads were simply forgotten, or never played out. I have read all of Pratchett's Discworld books, some many times over, and this one seems a bit weak.

Apologies to all; in my last post I come across as being a bit dogmatic and certain about pTerry's intentions.

Please accept it as a personal interpretation only.

I just really hope he gets back to Ankh-Morpork soon. I always preferred the myriad possibilities that come with that wonderful city.

I felt that one of the main things missing was the footnotes - all of the other books had copious quantities of asides, inside jokes, and sarcastic comments about the characters that didn't fit into the main flow of the story, but somehow seemed to flesh the tale out more fully.
These were glaringly obvious by their absence this time around.

I agree with Huw: yes, this is a long way off his best, but, looking at it the other way around, it was also considerably better than many of his recent books.

I think it's harsh to blame the decline on Alzheimer's. I mean, that might be a factor, but I think we also have to bear in mind that it's hard to maintain quality through a series of thirty novels - particularly when so many of them are talking about the same things in the same ways.

Philocrates wrote: "I wish I could agree but he has maintained the quality and he's a much deeper writer than is shown in this one. It's almost at a Young Adult level. That doesn't mean it isn't good but I have work..."

I don't think it's much more childish than a lot of his other novels - and if it is, well, he has turned toward more YA novels in recent years.

He's maintained quality in the past? Really?
Don't get me wrong, I love Pratchett... but I think he's top-level mainline (ie not YA) Discworld books were 1991-1993, 1996, and 1999-2000, plus Night Watch in 2002. It's now 2012, which means we're further from Hogfather than Hogfather was from Colour of Magic, and we're twenty years on from Reaper Man. I just can't imagine him being able to still have quite that magic, in the same setting, after 29 years of writing Discworld.

Snuff was darker than Unseen Academicals. Loved them both, as I do with (almost) every Pratchett.

I have to disagree, Wastrel, as I think that Going Postal was like the Pratchett of old. And I thought I Shall Wear Midnight was rather good, too.

Loved snuff and felt although ankh morpork as missing, loved the fleshing out of the other characters within the book. Feel the need for more Rincewind and the witches though