Reviews with content warning for Excrement - Snuff

A re-read. Just as well written, clever, and illuminating as I remember.

I liked Sybil's speech about not confusing worth and value. It was articulate about a complex perspective.

When I first read Snuff, I disliked the music part, but on second reading:

Vimes was always trying to get justice for these sapient creatures, well before he heard it. The music wasn't a driving factor, rather it was a tool to manipulate the rulers into acting quickly. It'd be nice if people in power cared for those with different life experiences to them, but using the music to give the rulers a personal connection, to cause them to act, is a more realistic representation of how our world works.

I wish that Wilkins and Vimes's upbringings weren't explained so much. Pratchett uses some clever turn of phrase and you know exactly what he means. And then he explains it. Explaining the punchline of a joke ruins the joke and it felt the same here where there'd be a nod and a wink, but then it'd be unnecessarily spelled out.

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.0

This is basically my second foray into the great Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld (the first being Equal Rites), and though I didn't enjoy it quite as much, it was still quite good.

I think part of the reason I didn't like it as much as I'd hoped to is because it's much less magical than I expected. It's a Discworld book, so there's still some mentions of magic and the question of whether goblins should count as vermin or a sentient race is a major theme. But the main story here is a murder mystery, with a dose of police procedural for good measure. Sam Vimes is forced to take a vacation, and only a few days into his and his family's stay at his wife's country house, someone commits murder and tries to frame Vimes for it. So of course he has to solve it and possibly revise his opinions about goblins in the process while still trying to have a good vacation with his wife and young son.

Vimes managed to be a dedicated "copper," a caring father, and an enjoyable character to read about all at once. And there was a good cast of supporting characters, from the inexperienced local cop to a children's book writer to Vimes' "gentleman's gentleman" Willikins, who was an extremely competent butler except for the fact that he could and would kill you with his bare hands if necessary and somehow managed to be hilarious.

As with everything Terry Pratchett writes, it seems, what seems like a fairly straightforward plot ends up having a ton of layers when you start digging into it. What seems like a fairly simple plot to do a murder and frame Vimes for it ends up having a lot more to it, starting by discovering that the person they thought was the murder victim is not the actual murder victim. And it also has one of those delightful fake endings where everything seems to be neatly wrapped up and yet there's still an hour left on the audiobook.

Really, my only criticism is the title, which in my opinion is weird and only related to the story in that Vimes occasionally uses tobacco products like snuff. Despite being somewhat dark at times, what with the murder and the treating goblins horribly, but overall it's still a fairly fun murder mystery in the Discworld. It's not my favorite thing I've ever read, mainly because mysteries are not my thing, but I enjoyed it.

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