by Terry Pratchett way back at the beginning of the year when a relative sent me some money for Christmas. It's the last book in the Discworld series that's currently available and so I'd held off reading it for a while because I didn't want it to be the very last one. I started reading it on my birthday because they seemed like a good day to start it.
In Snuff Sam Vimes is taken on holiday to his wife Sybil's country estate. It's supposed to be a relaxing holiday but of course he stumbles into a crime which he has to go about solving. The action in the countryside links back to strange happenings in Ankh-Morpork. This book introduces the race of Goblins, who were sort of touched on in Unseen Academicals, and is a pretty close study of racism as Goblins are being treated as a sub-human race.
I enjoyed having a whole book of Sam Vimes. He's my favourite character; I've always been a huge fan of the books featuring the Watch. I love how he's developed throughout the series. You can see that he could easily be one of the bad guys, but he's taken a different route and become one of the good guys. He's a proper detective with his little flaws and his own special interpretation of the rules.
This one felt slightly different to the other Discworld books, though I can't think exactly how or why. I think perhaps it was because it didn't have quite so many different plot strands. There was the main story in the countryside, plus a sub-plot which took the reader back to Ankh-Morpork. Normally the Discworld books have a handful of sub-plots which all gradually come together. This was a simpler sort of story.
It was also missing Death. I really missed him as he's one of my favourite characters. I like how he normally just gets a passing mention. I kept on expecting him to crop up but as far as I could tell he didn't show up. I did enjoy Wilikins, Sybil, Young Sam and Miss Beedle. Particularly in the case of the first two, we've seen them before, but haven't seen as much of them as in this book. Young Sam has just about reached a point where he's a proper character and I did find his rather obsessive interest in poo quite funny, especially Sybil's responses!
The end of this book had extracts from both Dodger and The Long Earth, Terry Pratchett's latest non-Discworld novels. I'd really like to read Dodger which is set in Victorian England and features Charles Dickens. I'm not sure if The Long Earth would really be my sort of thing, but it's definitely intrigued me, and Amazon recently sent me an email adverting the sequel, The Long War, which I think is some sort of sign that I should really give it a go.
It's strange to think that I'm at the end of the Discworld books in my collection. I've checked and seen that there will be another one, Raising Steam, and I'll obviously be adding that to my collection as soon as I can. In the meanwhile I've still got The Science of Discworld to read as well as the Johnny Maxwell trilogy and some of his stand-alones and collaborations. So I won't be done with the Terry Pratchett books for quite a while yet.
Sounds like an interesting book.
ReplyDeleteI may have to check this series out.
I'd really recommend the Discworld books, though I wouldn't advise anyone who was new to Terry Pratchett to start with the first in the series. The series as a whole is full of subseries, like the Witches or the Watch which are a bit easier to start with. ;-)
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