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[skygiants]

OKAY GUYS, I DID IT. I have read Snuff and, almost exactly two years after I began it, I am FINALLY DONE with the Great Discworld Reread!

(Okay, I accidentally skipped The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents, but I'm not going back for it because I don't care all that much.)

It is a shame, then, since this is the final achievement of a forty-book journey, that I did not actually like Snuff all that much.

I mean, on the very basic plot level, I have two fundamental questions:

1. Can we ever, please, please, please escape the cycle of "you thought humans hated THAT species? BUT WAIT, now humans think that species is pretty okay! But wait until you see what humans think of THIS species!" Orcs was JUST LAST BOOK. JUST LAST BOOK, orcs were the most hated things in the world!

And, you know, at least that book was actually, protagonist-wise, about an orc. And not about how what these goblins need is some humans to prove to some other humans that goblins might maybe be people, because, when taught, they can do some artistic people things.

2. So Vimes and Sybil are in Sybil's country house together, and there is a mystery to solve, on Sybil's home turf . . . and the book is about the development of the relationship between Vimes and Willikins? WILLIKINS is the other main character here?

I mean I guess you could argue that the book is equally as much about Vimes' relationship with Random Country Policeman #2, but in that case SAME COMPLAINT, EVEN MORESO.

Then of course there is the weirdness of the fact that almost every character has to go on and on about how Vimes is a good man, which is a.) just sort of uncomfortable and b.) really drives in the point that Vimes is not an underdog anymore. By this point in the series, Vimes is emphatically the Big Man on Campus. In previous posts in this series, people have brought up that they've become more uncomfortable with this at different times -- I think the first time someone brought it up in comments was in Night Watch -- and it didn't bother me then, but now it's impossible to ignore.

Because class was always the part about the Watch books that worked, even when the parts about race didn't. And now that Vimes is not the underdog any more in any way, shape or for -- which he's uncomfortable with! as well he should be! -- the book is constantly doing this weird uncomfortable backbend to explain how the fact that he's throwing his weight around as Big Man is a good thing, because he's a good man. Which is why, of course, twenty people have to come and tell us that it's right to side with him, it's the moral and heroic thing to back him up. Snuff bends back so far to explain this to us that it ends up straining all its seems -- and all the time that Vimes spends angsting in a sledgehammery fashion about how he ~understands~ the ~mind~ of ~evil~ is only meant to reinforce to us just how good a man he is. The bitterness, the nastiness that made Vimes Vimes has sort of seeped out around the edges of the mold of Commander Sam Vimes, Good Man.

There is one bit I want to call out, though. The two pages in the middle, with Angua and Carrot, where we get a fleeting glimpse of Angua being bitter about how everyone comes to Ankh-Morpork to become Ankh-Morpork's version of human -- those two pages were doing something that really doesn't happen in the rest of the book, where instead we're getting yet another iteration of "This Fantasy Race, Also People! WHO WOULDA THUNK."

. . . also, a sidenote: I thought after I read this book I would understand why several people thought Young Sam was going to be Vetinari's successor. I do not yet understand. (Team Glenda-Nutt forever!)

Comments

[ceitfianna]

I like your take on late stage Vimes, the bending over backwards to make him be good and in charge can be painful. Its like Vimes can't be like Vetinari even though he is. Change can come from the top, there are ways to use power, Pratchett can write that. He does it with Sybil being a Duchess or Lady Margolotta, but seems to have issues doing it with Vimes.

There's a character in a Ngaio Marsh mystery that has some of the same issues, he started out as a rag picker but now is a well known antiquities dealer. He tries to keep this character of being Cockney but he even says that he's out of date. The book's Tied Up in Tinsel. Its a really good look at the class idea of how you have to keep your roots somehow even though you're in a different place. But then that leads to these weird issues of being really something.

Though with Vimes there are other moral issues which makes it even more awkward. I enjoyed Snuff because I like mysteries and liked many parts of it but it didn't amaze me.

[skygiants]

There was a bit in this book where Vimes is for serious channeling Vetinari, like, textually so, and I was just like "NOOOOOOOO!" and made horrified walrus faces at the book.

[ceitfianna]

Its been a bit since I read it but he does do that and if the set up was different, that would be okay. But since Pratchett has set Vimes up to be the anti-Vetinari, though Vetinari created him. I don't know, it all makes my head hurt.

Also I loved William and Grantaire's last thread though sadly Grantaire landed on all William's inferiority complex issues. They definitely need to talk again.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I don't want Vimes to be Vetinari. That isn't Vimes' function, at all -- or at least not my Vimes.

And hah, yes, absolutely! I always feel like I should apologize to anyone who threads with Grantaire, he reels off so much pointlessly over-metaphorical nonsense. SORRY WILLIAM.

[kate_nepveu]

We said at WisCon that Angua often feels like she walked out of some other genre entirely, and that was one of the bits I was thinking of.

I just. I think I deleted the text file that had all the things wrong with the first half of this book because just scrolling by it made me angry and sad.

[skygiants]

She has these moments! And had them even before Discworld got serious, which makes them stand out even more starkly, I think. Like, she got there first.

I am glad you deleted it so as not to be angry and sad, but at the same time I kind of wish I could read it . . .

[kate_nepveu]

Turns out Dropbox does not keep that far back, but it was something like:

Lady-whose-name-I-forget slaps Vimes for suggesting that the goblins need to be measured against/adopt human standards, and then turns around and shows off how she's teaching them human standards. Yay consistency!

Wilikins would never SAY THOSE THINGS OUT LOUD. Vimes either, but especially Wilkins.

Oh my god this is even worse than the orcs.

Henpecked Vimes, die in a fire.

Oh look, imposing human gender stereotypes on the orcs like it's a universal biological imperative!

Eating dog jokes about the part-faux-Asian character's family food dishes, really?

Vimes, it is still police brutality when you get your butler to do it!

And, then, the point when I stopped listening for fear of flinging my iPod at the car windshield:

OF COURSE SHE'S FROM FAUX-AFRICA AND SHE'S A FAT JOLLY BLACK WOMAN.

. . . I can't believe I remember that much now.

[skygiants]

OH GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THE ASIAN FOOD DISHES. Who let Terry Pratchett get ANYWHERE near Asian cuisine?! DID WE NOT ALL LEARN OUR LESSON FROM INTERESTING TIMES?

(Also I hate the henpecked Vimes thing. SO MUCH.)

[kate_nepveu]

And there was another henpecked dude too! HATE.

It was just all so much what I would call, in other circumstances, lazy writing, but . . .

[remindmeofthe]

I think I read somewhere that Pratchett said there was only so much further he could go with Vimes, and Snuff is a clear demonstration that he's reached that point. I enjoyed the book overall, but Vimes's story has been told.

And yeah, I was like, "Oh goody, another 'this species are people too' story, haven't had eight million of those lately." I think I just preemptively blocked out everything that was problematic about it as soon as I realized where it was going, because embarrassingly enough I did not notice a single one of your excellent points.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I think that's very clear. He's reaching for places to keep going with Vimes, and it's very clearly a stretch. Vimes has REACHED. Vimes is done. Part of reason I liked Unseen Academicals so much, I think, is because of all the new characters; it could be a totally different kind of story, we didn't have to compare it against anything.

[sdelmonte]

My biggest problem with this book is that Vimes has become Batman. There is no suspense at any moment about anything. Good will triumph easily. Everything works out exactly right. And it's all pretty dull.

There just isn't much left to do with Vimes as a main character now. He needs to drift into the background.

[skygiants]

INDEED. I've really enjoyed, for the most part, the books that had Vimes as a background semi-antagonistic city institution (despite my lack of caring about Moist.)