Snuff by Terry Pratchett

John's birthday present this year was a rather extraordinary dinner party and his surprise present was a copy of Pratchett's latest book "Snuff".

It's a Vimes book, which is always a good thing, and features Sybil and Young Sam quite a lot too. I am pleased that Young Sam and Sybil were quite intrinsic to the story - too often, I think families get shelved while the main protagonist goes on their adventure, only returning home when everything is safe and they never know anything of import ever happened. Pratchett is always careful to try and portray the key people in his novels as best he can, and there was a lot about the book I really enjoyed.

But there were also some things I didn't enjoy. I really felt like Pratchett had a Message, and he was going to beat me to death with it as often as he could. I also felt that the narrative was overly complex, derailing me constantly by many short mini-stories which were not necessary to the over-all arch of the book, and because they happened so often, they weakened any relationship that might have been drawn.

Also, there was a key scene I found terribly confusing; I just had to accept that I either missed a step, or the step had not been well illuminated, and moved on.

So my end summary is that I enjoyed it but it wasn't as strong as some of his other Vimes stuff. I found myself tearing up once or twice as I remembered there won't be many more of these books to come.

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Sarah P