In Which Our Intrepid Commander takes a Vacation

Book # 11 - Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Of all Pratchett's Discworld novels, the ones about the Ankh-Morpork Watch have become my favourites, mainly on the strength of Commander Sam Vimes.

In Snuff, Sam has been forced by his aristocratic wife, Lady Sybil, to go on vacation. But in the tradition of all great police officers, private detectives and superheroes, of course Vimes stumbles across a body and a mystery in the quiet countryside.

For all their... popcornness (and I mean this in the sense that they can be consumed quickly and are a hell of a lot of fun), Pratchett's books also tackle some pretty good, hefty topics. In this one he turns to race relations again (as he has in past books such as Feet of Clay and Thud!), this time shedding light on goblins, a Discworld-wide maligned species who live in holes, steal, smell bad and whose 'religion' centers around the collection and storing of bodily fluids. But of course, in typical Pratchett tradition, there is much, much more to goblins than anyone thought.

And that's also part of the beauty of Pratchett's books; his creations are beautifully intricate and deep and different from one another, and yet share commonality in that they all are beautifully intricate and deep. I admire Pratchett's world building a hell of a lot.

But of course, it's all the little touches too, and the familiar characters; Willikins the faithful manservant, Young Sam's typical 6-year old boy preoccupation with all things poo, Captain Carrot and the rest of the gang, it's all good.

And of course there are footnotes. Nobody footnotes like Pratchett.

Number 27 is Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett. Time was I used to read everything Pratchett put out, but the sheer number of books he manages to write actually made that a daunting task, so I slowed down in my Pratchett consumption. Also, I discovered I liked some of his groups of characters more than others. My favourites are the Watch, and my second favourite is Death and his family. Thief of Time concerns Death and his granddaughter Susan.

Honestly, I didn't like this one as much, I didn't find it as... funny as I usually find his books. Discworld's version of Death is usually amusing, but he didn't have an awful lot to do in this book, other than to send his granddaughter Susan to look into the matter of time being stopped and the world ending, and then try and convince the other three, er, rather four, retired Horsemen of the Apocalypse to ride out with him.

I think I didn't like this one as much because there was too much chronobabble, as an impossible clock is built, time is collected and delved out by a group of enigmatic monks, and Time has a son, twice, who is both destroyer and savior. Something about it all just didn't work for me as much as it usually does in Pratchett's books.

Number 11. Thud! by Terry Pratchett. I used to read a lot of Pratchett's Disc World fare. They're fun, have excellent internal consistency and a lovely sense of humour. In some ways though, Pratchett's like the Grisham or King of the fantasy set; he churns them out and they're good, but that's about it.

I haven't read a Disc World novel for awhile. It wasn't that I grew out of them, but I did start to think they were becoming a little... boring. They were also starting to resemble Law & Order 'ripped from the headlines' episodes, where Pratchett would take something topical from our world and fit it into his world. And there's nothing wrong with that; fantasy as a genre (and science-fiction as well) is often about viewing our world through the lens of another; Tolkien himself was often queried if his Lord of the Rings was a thinly veiled allegory of WWII (he denied this).

I've also, through all my Disc World readings, realized that my favourite group of characters to read about are the Watch. Oh sure, I like the witches, and I like the wizards of the Unseen University, the Watch of Ankh-Morpork are my favourite characters. Probably because overall, I do love a good police procedural. I love the character of Sam Vimes, Commander of the Watch. He's a good cop, through and through, but he's also a Duke (through marriage) and a family man and I do like how Pratchett's actually grown the character a bit over the years, yet still lets him remain true to his inner 'copdom'.

Thud! is a bit of an amalgam of influences. There's some Da Vinci Code stuff going on, as well as a lot of racial tensions and religious extremism. It's long been established on Disc World that trolls and dwarves don't get along with one another. There was a historic battle at Koom Valley (where the dwarves may have ambushed the trolls, or the trolls may have ambushed the dwarves) that ended with everyone dead, and it is, unfortunately, celebrated every year. And by celebrate, they mean that tensions between the dwarves and the trolls get ugly, and even in cosmopolitan Anhk-Morpork, there are clashes between the two.

The anniversary of Koom Valley is almost upon Disc World again, and Commander Sam Vimes and his Watch are trying to deal with everything that means. Adding fuel to the fire this time though are the preachings of 'deep-downers', fantatical dwarves who never leave the mines beneath the mountains, and if they do, they swarth themselves from head to toe in black, lest the light corrupt them. They are known as Grags, and they are the foremost interpreters of the stuff Tak wrote, Tak being the dwarven equivalent of a god. One of the Grags in particular preaches for wiping out of all trolls, saying its like doing them a favour because trolls are too stupid to live. Hamcrusher is very vocal, and is gaining a lot of listeners in Ankh-Morpork, much to the dislike of Vimes, and the city's troll population of course. Now, when Hamcrusher turns up dead and the Grags' 'interpreter' Ardent says a troll did it, well, Vimes realized he could be facing an honest to goodness race war in his city. As this could interfere with his daily, 6 o'clock sharp reading of 'Where's My Cow' to his young son, Vimes is increadibly unhappy.

What follows is a very intricate mystery that includes a gigantic painting of the Battle of Koom Valley (which may or may not point to a hidden treasure), a huge mine dug out beneath Ankh-Morpork, missing miners, a drug-additcted troll witness, mysterious and dangerous dwarf signs that have perhaps awoken an ancient, dwarf curse, and a troll made of diamond, who could just very well be the Troll King. I found this to actually be one of Pratchett's deepest (forgive the pun) books as it really does tackle racism and fanaticism very well. Even down to the moments between Sgt. Angua (werewolf) and Lance-Constable Sally (vampire) where they try to overcome their prejudices against one another; all are handled well. And then ending, even if you're like Vimes and aren't into all that 'mystical stuff', is well done and not trite.

I think this is probably the Disc World novel I've enjoyed the most since Hogfather.