Snuff

Overall, I’m glad to have read–and listened–to it. It’s a good story and I’m a big fan of the Watch books. That said, it’s important to understand (as I’m sure many others have noted) that Terry’s condition at the time meant that the writing wasn’t always up to his typical standards. I admit that I haven’t spent much time looking into it, but It’s clear that someone else edited and perhaps did a fair share of the writing. Everything from the style, usage (and extent) of various literary devices, and character behaviors were off. It wasn’t bad, but it often felt forced, like someone without Terry’s skill was trying to sound like Terry. “He’s known for using [insert technique here], so let’s throw lots of that in!” If only it were that easy to write like Terry wrote.

NOT SPOILERS, BUT HINTS FOLLOW. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK]

Without getting too far into it, I’ll just say that some of the monologues were unusually long for Vimes, and there were times when, especially Sybil, Willikins, and Fred Colon make me say, “Huh?” Hearing Lady Sybil bluntly repeat the same curse word within a couple sentences was awkward, out of character, and forced. Yes, we get it, Willikins is a bad ass. And poor Fred, while known for not being the biggest fan of some species (see Men At Arms), has been lazily upgraded to token “racist” to help the moral of the story along.

Again, I like the story and it’s made my bedtime audiobook list like so many other Discworld books. Apart from a few odd or cringey parts, it’s great. So far I much prefer it to Raising Steam which I am having a heckuva time getting into and enjoying, despite being a fan of Moist. Going Postal was great. Making Money was less so based partially on the bold injection of his particular (and rudimentary) economic philosophy. Still, it’s clearly Pratchett doing the writing and that means it’s well written. Raising Steam? Meh…I’m hoping it grows on me. But I digress….

I’ve read enough of the Discworld series to come to know and love the writing style of Terry Pratchett. This book isn’t it. I understand this was near the beginning of his disease which robbed him high and dry. This book just made me sad. It is full of anger, violence, bad language. Not that I need to be entertained with light hearted, clever british humor all the time, but honestly that is why I got hooked on the Discworld series. This was just not what I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting, but reading this, I was shocked, and then saddened, and it made me very sympathetic to his struggles, and his own shock that he must have been experiencing as the disease chipped away at his faculties. I gave it 2 stars because it must have taken a great effort to grind this out (where the heck was his editor??). But if you think you want to read this because it will fall into that lovely madcap world of Discworld, you won’t find that here.

Loved the book. I’m a Pratchett addict, so there’s no way the uninitiated would understand: And this late in the Discworld series is not a place to start. Start with something fun like Going Postal; there was a movie done on this one. Sorry Terry is gone, but he wrote lots of books, 41 of them, for us to enjoy. The books deal with a flat earth – a disc, normal human beings, and then every form of witch, troll, vampire, and goblin that are portrayed as just normal “people” trying to get along with life.

A decent ending to the Sam Vimes series of Discworld novels, but you can tell that this is not Pratchett of old. The humor isn’t as biting or sharp. Things feel sort of meandering. Bit too much emphasis on things that Pratchett of old would have brought in and out of story (such as the entire poo thing) and not gone back to over and over again. On the whole, it feels very much like he had a ghost writer helping him with the overall book, as it’s feel is just different then classic Discworld.

Sybil along with Vetinari insists that Commander Vimes should take a vacation with his family to his wife’s family estate. Of course, the Commander of the Ankh-Morpork constabulary, Duke of Ankh, and Blackboard Monitor Vimes are always on duty even when they aren’t. This is the 39th book in the Discworld series, and the only bad thing I can say is that there’s only two more to go in the series proper, so I’m starting to feel slightly depressed about that. But this is a wonderful addition to Discworld, and if you’ve gotten this far into the series, I know that you are going to have to read it.

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