I really liked it, but it suffers from kind of the same flaw as *Snuff *does IMHO : after a while, the constant pounding of “Science good ! Reason good ! Supersition bad !” gets grating and drowns out the genuinely moving or funny bits. It is its own Grandfather Bird, yanno ?
I’m in for half of this. I liked Snuff well enough while I was reading it, but I’ve felt absolutely no desire to reread it, other than my now solid desire to reread everything Pterry wrote. Raising Steam, OTOH, I liked from the first page and have reread at least thrice.
I love them all, including the first two and Eric. I’m not sure I have an absolute favorite though. It really depends on the mood I’m in.
My favorite witch book is Witches Abroad
My favorite Watch book is The Fifth Elephant (or Feet of Clay - again, depending on my mood)
My favorite Death book is Reaper Man
My favorite Susan book is Thief of Time
My favorite Rincewind book is The Light Fantastic
My favorite Moist book is Going Postal
My favorite Wizards book is Reaper Man
My favorite Tiffany book is Wintersmith
My favorite stand-alone book is Small Gods
My favorite story line is the Witches
My favorite title is “The Fifth Elephant”, mostly because I love the Bruce Willis movie.
Favorite book would be “Lords and Ladies”.
I only recently realised that the title was a riff on Repo Man.
Really? I loves me some Pratchett, but I have to objectively say that there are several pretty bad books in his output. I think the books in general show a nice time-based bell-shaped curve. Reasonably bad at the start - The Colour of Magic / The Light Fantastic were nothing great in terms of humour, characters or plot, but then in the middle he hit a real purple patch with a whole series of excellent books, and then his later books really fell off in terms of quality. *Snuff *was pretty bad, but I felt Unseen Academicals really was the one that hit rock bottom. There was nothing in it for me, and for the first time I read an entire Pratchett without laughing out loud even once, let alone having to put the book down so I could wipe away the tears of laughter that I had when reading Jingo.
Then I read Raising Steam, and that made a second book that didn’t make me laugh even once. The deft touch and the magic were gone, and it felt like a leaden-footed tramp through a marsh of half-made ideas and rehashing of real history, rather than the mad inventiveness of his middle period. I was actually unsure I would want to read Raising Taxes if that ever came out, because it was sure to be another Moist von Lipwig-saves-an-elderly-institution-while-being-a-charming-rogue snorefest. It was good once. Okay twice. Not three times, or four.
After all that negative energy, though, it’s good to turn back to my favourites: Small Gods and Jingo. I still re-read them both semi-regularly and am amazed at the bite of his light satire. He was really ripping into religion and patriotism with a scythe, and they are both excellent books. Don’t make me choose between them. Please.
Yes, me too.
I’ll go with Hogfather for the number two spot. All of the good parts of Discworld together with one of the better stories.
Small Gods is special to me as it was my first DW novel. But for overall appreciation it’s Night Watch or I Shall Wear Midnight. NW in particular. It takes existing characters of already considerable depth and shows the reader that “You don’t know nothing” about these folks. Their bonds and relationships are far deeper than the audience had realized.
His last few novels were written by dictation. Supposedly, this didn’t make writing dramatically harder, but it did make editing much more difficult. I think this shows. I think all three of these books still have his wit and talent as a writer on display, but they are also less focused, more meandering, and occasionally downright hard to the follow. The action scenes in Raising Steam and Snuff, in particular, struck me as particularly difficult.
I still enjoyed these books for their strengths, though I would admit they were generally on the weaker end of his output.
I’m kinda baffled by all the love for Small Gods. A friend tried to get me into Discworld and told me to start there and it put me off the series for a decade.
I’m going to be weird and say I really loved Men At Arms; It comes from what I call the Middle Pratchett period, after everything stopped being a bad fantasy parody and before everything turned into Real World Issues With Real People And A Thin Veneer of ‘Fantasy’ On Top.
I’m rereading all the DW books, so my opinion might be different after this second go round, but I think my favorite was Witches Abroad, then maybe I Shall Wear Midnight.
and loitering Within Tent 
My favourites: Witches Abroad, Monstrous Regiment, The Fifth Elephant, Maskerade… I love them all. Not really a Rincewind fan, but Interesting Times is hilarious.
The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Eric and Sourcery are where Sir Terry was still developing Discworld, so they are not as good, but not bad either.
I’m rereading 'em too. Currently my two favs are THUD! (I love the exploration of Dwarf culture) and “Hogfather”.
But…for all the flack that The Color of Magic gets, it sets the stage for Guards Guards and provides so many clues that if you read CoM right before GG, it wouldn’t be a mystery. It actually sets up a bunch of other stuff as well. Frankly, The Light Fantastic isn’t as good a book (he didn’t quite make it hold together as a novel).
I read it again since I posted, and the charge sheet was:
Conspiracy to cause an affray, going equipped to commit a crime, obstruction, threatening behaviour, loitering with intent, loitering within tent, travelling for the purposes of committing a crime, malicious lingering, and carrying concealed weapons.
Malicious Lingering
I felt Snuff needed one more editing pass, though I understood why it hadn’t gotten it. I was also disappointed by DEATH not making an appearance. And it was a bit heavy-handed.
And I’ve just found out Malicious Lingering crops up again in The Wee Free Men:
I think I need a name change.
I Shall Wear Midnight has my vote for favorite title.
I agree, and it made me sad to see his quality diminish, because of course the cause was obvious. I also wonder if he was trying to make a more forceful point by being less satirical that, ironically, actually became less of a comment on society. Rather than being pin-sharp and light-footed, they were a bit sledgehammer: RACISM IS BAD, OKAY??? Yes, we got that, thanks.
This review sums up most of what I think, and I agree with the majority of her points, actually: <i>Snuff</i> by Terry Pratchett
You’re baffled by why, on this board, a book which has a strong anti-ignorance and anti-fundamentalist theme would be loved?