# Discworld #39 - Snuff
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 12, 2011, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418 "2011-10-12T13:37:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/One_And_Only_Wanderers)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/1 "2011-10-12T13:37:48Z")
Eagerly awaiting this downloading to my kindle tomorrow. Who else is going to be devouring this? I love the Sam Vimes books, so have high expectations for this
> [@](#):
>
> It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse.And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder.He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven.But not quite all…
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/2 "2011-10-12T13:46:00Z")
Amazon UK has despatched my copy overseas already, so it should be here tomorrow or the next day. I have to maintain my collection of First/First/UK Pratchett or I would have gone the Kindle route.
We’ll see if it is better than _Unseen Academicals_, which I didn’t like at all.
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### Author:  [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/One_And_Only_Wanderers)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/3 "2011-10-12T13:47:03Z")
Unseen read better for me the second time through, but yeah, not one of the strongest
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### Author:  [@yanceylebeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yanceylebeef)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/4 "2011-10-12T14:34:09Z")
My copy dropped two days ago, and I’ve only been able to read at bedtime, but this is really good so far.
I’ve already laughed out loud enough to wake the dogs and Mrs.Lebeef.
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### Author:  [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/5 "2011-10-12T14:48:03Z")
I’m looking forward to this. I didn’t particularly enjoy _Unseen_, but he was on good form with _I Shall Wear Midnight_, definitely the best of the Tiffany Achings for me.
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### Author:  [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/6 "2011-10-12T15:39:50Z")
I know this is a bit off topic, but do we know when Terry Pratchett is…going to die? I thought he was going to finish some books, then end his own life due to his illness. Is he planning on finishing the Discworld series somehow?
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/7 "2011-10-12T15:43:01Z")
Unknown at this time. There are still some books in the pipeline IIRC. **Scouting For Trolls** and **Raising Taxes** , for example.
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### Author:  [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/8 "2011-10-12T16:22:06Z")
I got an early copy and read it last week. It’s very good; classic Pratchett, a bit of a return to form. Sam Vimes is one of his best characters, and Snuff is up there with Pratchett’s best. I saw no signs of Pratchett’s intellect failing, and I expect he’s got at least a few more years and a few more good books in him.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/9 "2011-10-12T16:43:47Z")
> [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](#):
>
> Eagerly awaiting this downloading to my kindle tomorrow.
When I checked the reviews on Amazon yesterday, some were good and some were bad—and most of the bad ones seemed to be complaining about crappy formatting on the Kindle edition.
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### Author:  [@yanceylebeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yanceylebeef)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/10 "2011-10-12T16:54:20Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> When I checked the reviews on Amazon yesterday, some were good and some were bad—and most of the bad ones seemed to be complaining about crappy formatting on the Kindle edition.
Yeah, the kindle formatingcan be abit of a pain. mostly in droppedspaces between words.
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### Author:  [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/11 "2011-10-12T17:32:39Z")
That’s interesting - my advance copy was an EPUB which I converted to MOBI and read on my Kindle, and the formatting was fine.
Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that Amazon’s official version was more error-prone than the copy I made on my home computer using freeware. I don’t know what they’re doing - and it occurs to me it may be an artefact of their DRMed version of MOBI, the AZW - but errors in official Amazon versions of ebooks are pretty common.
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### Author:  [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2011, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/12 "2011-10-12T18:05:58Z")
> [@Shakester](#):
>
> That’s interesting - my advance copy was an EPUB which I converted to MOBI and read on my Kindle, and the formatting was fine.
>
> Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that Amazon’s official version was more error-prone than the copy I made on my home computer using freeware. I don’t know what they’re doing - and it occurs to me it may be an artefact of their DRMed version of MOBI, the AZW - but errors in official Amazon versions of ebooks are pretty common.
Could be a brilliant anticopy trick, like inexistant streets on maps - if the file you’ve got has shitty formatting and five tyops a page, they can prove in court that it’s theirs !
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### Author:  [@galen\_ubal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galen_ubal)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/13 "2011-10-14T01:56:35Z")
Mine arrived on my Kindle yesterday afternoon, Australia time - would’ve been 12:01am on the 13th, not bad. I didn’t notice any typos, and only a little odd formatting. The latter was after I changed my font size from the default, so that probably caused it.
I’ve just finished it. Better than _Unseen Academicals_, but not as good as _Thud_. Overall, I found it rather meandering, with an odd pacing.
A few more specific thoughts:
I’m quite annoyed by the Dark continuing to affect Vimes - I thought that he had dismissed it and the end of _Thud!_. It was also, more or less, acting as his ally; that strikes me as anathema to the established Vimes character
The goblins just don’t work for me. I’m not sure why, but I think that it’s partially because the race has just been plopped down into the middle of the established ecology, starting with the last book. Trolls, dwarfs, etc had all been in several books, and characters and storylines regarding/involving those races had grown and developed a little more organically. Not so with goblins, and their premier in _Unseen_
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### Author:  [@Miss\_Woodhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Woodhouse)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2011, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/14 "2011-10-14T23:55:02Z")
I enjoyed it. There were some very sweet moments with depth hidden in the comedy. That is what makes a good Pratchett to me. I definitely loved seeing more of Young Sam. He’s adorable.
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### Author:  [@Archergal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Archergal)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2011, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/15 "2011-10-15T20:17:36Z")
I just finished listening to it on audio.
I quite liked it, better than I liked Unseen Academicals. I liked Sam Vimes here, I liked bloody-minded Willikins and poo-obsessed Young Sam. I loved the domestic scenes between Sam and Sybil (sharing a bath!!)
I agree that the goblin story wasn’t really that well developed, and Sgt. Colon & Nobby were just thrown in just because.
Did I miss an appearance by Death in this book? I don’t remember one, but I was anxious to get through it. Aren’t there very few DW books where Death fails to make an appearance?
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### Author:  [@irishgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irishgirl)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2011, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/16 "2011-10-15T20:47:31Z")
I was…uneasy about a plot point.
Pterry has in the past poked fun at the “even if it is horrible, it’s ok because it’s _cultural_” PC school of thought, and this book had sort of overcompensated
with " it’s horrible but necessary, and cultural, and actually OK because of complicated metaphysical reasons"- which I felt was…not like Pterry at all.
In the the past, horrible but necessary would have been all that would have been said, and that would actually have been OK with me.
Discworld has always been a very _humanist_ world- and that just seemed…oddly spiritual.
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### Author:  [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2011, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/17 "2011-10-15T21:58:08Z")
I’m only a third of the way through and loving it. The electronic readers present an unusual issue regarding Pratchett’s books, in that all those little additions and side-notes at the bottom of the ‘pages’ in a real book become linked numbers in the text…and I haven’t figured out how to get BACK to what page i was on once I’ve clicked to go read the add-on. It’s frustrating. But I’m loving the character development, especially of his ‘gentleman’s gentleman’.
I have a question about Vimes’ past, which I’ll put in spoilers just in case.
In whicht book did Vimes gain his ‘Darkness’ ability? It sounds familiar but I can’t recall just when he gained this. It’s from the Valley of Koom days, I know, and I remember reading about that, but…for some reason it just feels like I missed something somewhere.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2011, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/18 "2011-10-15T22:05:26Z")
> [@Taomist](#):
>
> The electronic readers present an unusual issue regarding Pratchett’s books, in that all those little additions and side-notes at the bottom of the ‘pages’ in a real book become linked numbers in the text…and I haven’t figured out how to get BACK to what page i was on once I’ve clicked to go read the add-on.
On a Kindle (the kind with a keyboard), you just push the **Back** button. Surely there’s a way on other e-readers…?
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### Author:  [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2011, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/19 "2011-10-15T22:26:11Z")
[My review is up, linked to avoid spoilers (very minor) in this thread.](http://www.lookoutmountainbookstore.com/)
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### Author:  [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2011, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discworld-39-snuff/599418/20 "2011-10-15T22:28:08Z")
I have a jailbrook Nook color and use the Aldiko reader. going back just brings me to the previous page of footnotes for some reason. There is likely a way I’m just not seeing right now.
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