Snuff
Terry Pratchett
Sam Vimes pontificates
Snuff was disappointing. It’s a formulaic Sam Vimes novel that deviates from the Sam Vimes formula in damaging ways.
With novel 39, Snuff, we are counting down to the end of Terry Pratchett‘s Discworld series of 41 novels. Here at the end the series has become a braid with three strands: Tiffany Aching, Moist von Lipwig, and Sam Vimes. (I’m counting Unseen Academicals in the latter, since it is thematically similar to a Vimes novel.)
The later Vimes novels concern racial/species relations. Sam stumbles upon prejudices against some non-human type: dwarfs, trolls, vampires, zombies, orcs, and brings them under the protection of the law. Vimes is one of the most important citizens of Ankh-Morpork, second only to the Patrician Havelock Vetinari. He has built the City Watch into the finest police force in the Discworld, widely imitated by other cities and nations. How does he do it?
One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Albert Schweizer:
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
Sam Vimes lives by that principle. He doesn’t dispense wisdom. He doesn’t tell his officers how to behave or think -- he shows them.
Or he did. In Snuff Sam Vimes has taken to tediously pontificating about the nature of the Law and Justice. It is not that he didn’t think about these things in earlier novels. Since the story was often told from his point of view, we the readers were inside his head and knew his thoughts. But now he lectures younger police officers (and other unfortunates) at length. There are other faults, which I need not go into.
I will end by mentioning one thing I rather enjoyed. In the countryside Vimes meets authors -- two of them in fact. Miss Felicity Beedle, author of The World of Poo (Pratchett went so far as to write and publish this work) is an important character. Miss Jane Gordon shows up only briefly. Here is her first appearance
Jane, thought Vimes, the strange one. And she was. She was just as demure as the other sisters, but somehow as he looked at her he got the impression that she was seeing right through him, thoughts and all.
I thought as I read their conversation, “She is the Discworld’s Jane Austen.” The Epilog confirmed this suspicion.
In summary, Snuff is, in my opinion, the least of the Discworld novels I have so far read. It is mainly of interest to completists.
I loved the audiobook of Snuff as a child but yes the story is weak, a sad example of the impact of the embuggerance as well