#my personal opinion is also that when vimes retires angua should take over the watch not carrot. and cherry should make captain.

[powpowhammer]

I would very much like to know what you meant by "also Snuff is very bad" if such is alright to request

Hey! I let this sit in my inbox for four months. Sorry. I think Snuff is easily the weakest Vimes novel, despite respecting what it set out to do. I let it sit because there's a lot to say. There are three kinda big problems: the way Vimes is written, the way the story is written (plot), and the way the story is written (literary strength). Spoilers for every City Watch book and a couple of others. Very long rant ahead.

Before I proceed with the harsher words here's a bunch of things I liked a lot in Snuff: Vimes being totally enraptured by the goblin music, the goblin cave system, the whole goblin body stuff jar religion ritual, Vimes having sex with Sybil in the tub and generally expressing a lot more Loving His Wife So Much on-page instead of impliedly, the enlisted constable being quite competent and also being really good at kung fu (and his mom being from the Counterweight Continent, shout out to all my half-and-half representation wherever I can find it), Willikins being Vimes's fixer. The one noble guy who hated his evil wife. Stinky and the Harry King sections (very first-gen son vibes). The jokes about the river. Nobby once again maybe Finding Love.

And before I proceed again, I think that as an American this very sort of setting is alien to me in a way that Ankh-Morpork or Koom Valley is not. Landed gentry and estates are, despite our stupid amounts of physical geography, not as a big part of our cultural storytelling, for various reasons. And at least for a few more decades pending the outcome of revisionist educational legislation, thanks to the aftermath of the Civil War, we generally do see owning a large property with a fiefdom of workers as a trait difficult to associate with heroic figures, Gone With The Wind nonwithstanding. So when something is set at an estate and concerns explicit class divisions, it unavoidably gets read as a Genre. (Contrast the class division stories that take place inside Ankh-Morpork, which are more explicitly about moneyed power that more incidentally happens to be associated with peerage, e.g. The Truth or Feet of Clay. In these books Lord de Worde, Selachii, etc. could be replaced by old-money Families that are nonetheless not 'noble' like the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, etc without too much narrative dissonance, I think. Men at Arms is an outlier but after that the stories are less about AM's True King and more about political jockeying.)

I think giving it the 'this is a pastiche of Pride and Prejuidice-style writing' handicap can make up for some of its deficiencies, but at its core it simply does not read like, say, any other Vimes novel (this isn't unique to Snuff; I think as Pterry's faculties went, all the books after Making Money (disclaimer: I have never read the TA books and people say Wear Midnight is superb so I make no claims there) really read differently than everything before. The prose is less tight, the courses of events are less clear, and the characterization is spottier. The themes don't resonate as clearly.

Vimes: Vimes's dogged determination to think of himself as Just A Guy Who Cares About Justice is undermined in Snuff by two major factors: his willingness to use his power in conflicts against those with less power than him (e.g., the various scenes set at the pub) and his explicit utilization of the powers of the Summoning Dark. Vimes's various trials and successes have come from his bloody-mindedness and determination to remain himself despite the changes in his life.

Regarding power, social: In previous novels we see Vimes more a (narrative) victim of his status than a deployer of it, as both a running joke and a driver of the plot. (Don't confuse the creature comforts of wealth, such as daily bacon sandwiches and soft beds, with the auspices of power, which affects other people.) He only chooses to use it when he can't win a fight as himself, and then, reluctantly. In Feet of Clay, the coat-of-arms machinations bewilder him, and when he finally confronts Dragon King of Arms he does it as a public servant making an arrest. In Fifth Elephant, he is forced onto the trip because of his dukedom (Vetinari understanding, of course, that he is the only person who can solve the Wolf Nazi problem). We see him resolving conflicts with physical violence (bandits) and mangled street diplomacy (dwarf inspectors) before finally being forced to resort to noble privilege for the sake of another (in protection of Detritus's civil rights). He is sent to prison and then onto The Game in spite of his power, and makes it through because of his personal qualities (see power, supernatural below). In Thud! he is humiliated by his inability to remain equals with his house staff. In Snuff, despite the initial discomfort with the role he expresses during the mandatory opening Vetinari session, he doesn't interact with his household outside the twirling maids and Willikins (who has distinguished himself as somewhat of a wildcard character at this point in time). At all times he knows he is in charge of the hermit, the pub and its owner, the farmers, and the rest of the villagers. For a character so set on being a civilian, he adapts quite quickly to nobility once removed from the city and the presence of other 'nobles'. And maybe this is the point of the book, but if so, it doesn't come across clearly at all. Furthermore, when he's not wielding noble power, he's constantly kicking down doors and asserting I AM THE LAW! at a level of arrogance we've seen him think but never before act upon without an active foe (contrast Night Watch, where he pulls rank on Quirke when challenged and negotiates with civilians on the barricade far more than he barks orders).

Regarding power, supernatural: Vimes has survived 40+ years of rough living via grit and instinct. We know he's an excellent street fighter, though not the best. The 'special' traits that Vimes has up through Thud! are his instincts - his character-central curiosity (bloody-minded suspicious bastard!), and his connection to and control over pure animal rage, aka The Beast. In Fifth Elephant he deploys it to make it through the Game and collars it when the fight is no longer about survival but domination. In Night Watch, it again emerges but is consciously caged in the service of human justice (fairness and example-setting, in the case of the torturer, and due process, in the final fight with Carcer). Either way, the 'power' comes entirely from within, and is not magical in any way, shape or form - and fittingly, the corralling of a force that stems from prehumanity is itself a very human thing to do.

In Thud!, a bunch of themes introduced in Fifth Element get developed in cool ways - religion, ritual, darkness, curses, and 'endarkening' - and the apotheosis comes when Vimes's internal rulekeeper overpowers an ancient force of evil because he loves justice and he loves his son. (Other people have written pretty thoroughly about how the conscious decision to be Good when you could so easily be Bad is the core of both Vimes and Granny Weatherwax's characterizations, so I won't expand on that too thoroughly.) The Summoning Dark is effectively exorcised, and the scar it leaves is power enough to intimidate the remaining dwarven obstacles in the denouement.

In Snuff, Vimes literally has magic powers thanks to the Summoning Dark. He can see in the dark, understand language in ways he should not, and develops an explicitly supernatural sixth sense. While the darksight is kind of cool, and fits his character well as Avatar of Night Policeman, the fact that the book continually points out that he got it from the SD is a burr on the coat of the narrative. He does things another person wouldn't be able to do, and cites his magic demon over and over for it.

Story, plot: Every City Watch book is set up in the same way: (optional) cold open, interpersonal theme Z is introduced, plot X (A Detective Problem) is introduced, plot Y (A Second Problem) is introduced, sometimes Y before X. (I hesitate to call these A and B plots because the importance of each varies from book to book.) Things happen, the plots eventually join up, plot climax, emotional/character climax in which Vimes or another watchman reaches or proves an important point to themself or us, denouement. I have no problem with this formula because it is broad enough to include within itself infinite room for variation. Some quick examples: Feet of Clay (Golem looks for work/assassination attempt. Cheery comes looking for work and is a girl. Golems are robots. Someone is trying to kill Vetinari. Vimes has to get a coat of arms. Story occurs. The case gets solved and it was connected to the golems. Golems are people, not robots. Words In The Heart Cannot Be Taken. People matter. The Vimes coat of arms gets restored.) Fifth Elephant (There is a divide between the Old and the New. Racial tension. Cheery is coming out more loudly. Someone has stolen the replica Scone and killed three men. Vimes gets sent to Uberwald. Story occurs. The case is solved and it is connected to the coronation. Angua and Vimes both assert their humanity and agency by refusing to abuse their power to kill even when it would be expected of them. Change and cultural development is not a threat to and is indeed even crucial to the survival of traditional institutions.)

I don't think a deviation from this structure is a bad thing, but the structure is so strong that it's much easier to follow the story built upon it.

In Snuff, we get a cold open (goblin stuff) and an ostensible Y plot (Vimes Is Forced To Go On Vacation To the Countryside). But what is the X plot? Is it that there is smuggling and human (goblin) trafficking? Is it the murder on the hill? Is it Mysterious Noble Bullshit Vimes sniffs out? If pressed, what is the Z theme? That goblins are people worth respecting? It's not this. This is readily made explicit to us by Ms. Beedle long before even the buildup to the book's action climax (the river chase). There's no show, only tell - we never learn something a character doesn't tell us. Vimes spends the whole book picking fights in the village, lecturing other nobles, and being told things about goblins. The most interesting development is his mentorship of Constable Upshot, but it's inconsistent and oscillates wildly between "sir, you don't know what you're talking about", surprising competence, and hero worship, with no directional progression. When Vimes and the Watch get to Klatch and discover the slave plantation they deal with it. The scene that occurs when the emotional climax would be expected - Stratford coming for Vimes's life on the river cruise - doesn't tell us anything new about the characters, their beliefs, or moral themes, just that Vimes is a Badass. The lesson Bad Men Do Things For Money could have been developed by giving Stratford a foil (maybe in the form of the constable, another commoner who chooses to be a Good Man, by giving Upshot moral dilemmas he resolves on-page). Similarly, the most cohesive Theme suggested by the climax and denouement isn't that Goblins Are People but that Commoners Are Just As Likely As Lords To Treat Goblins As Unpeople, which is miserably pessimistic. Vimes doesn't learn anything and neither do we.

Story, literary critique: Other books - not just City Watch books, but books like Going Postal, Carpe Jugulum, and Thief of Time - are both generous with narrative inclusion (we get scenes from the perspectives of the antagonists without being spoiled and from the perspective of deuteragonists or side characters). At the same time, we always know what our characters are thinking or feeling at any given time, even when they don't know what is going on or are acting with a hidden motive, because of strong characterization and effective foreshadowing. Stanley and Mr. Groat get scenes to themselves in GP that develop their characters and the mythos of the Post Office, and later we know Moist is up to some zany shit when he sets up all those prayers and then digs up his haul. Granny Weatherwax Weatherwaxes the Magpyrs after demonstrating Borrowing and her utter loyalty to herself and the land, and the Magpyrs have plenty of scenes with Agnes and one another. The Auditors have scenes that develop the fact that being human makes you human, setting up Myria's eventual meeting with Death. Back with Vimes, in The Fifth Elephant, when the chandelier falls and he gets sent to prison, he's just as confused as we are. When he escapes, we understand every part of his process as he comes up with it, moment by moment. Vimes in particular has a very visceral, real-time narrative which I think leads to why his characterization is so strong. (Contrast this with Carrot, for whom outside of Guards! Guards! and his letter-writing we never really know quite what he is thinking.) When Vimes is in the scene, we're basically never outside his head - EXCEPT in Snuff. In Snuff, there are at least as many scenes where we only know that Vimes IS doing things, not why he's doing them, or how he feels. The book reads like sometimes, it's someone else telling a story about Vimes's adventures, only recording the events that occur instead of telling us how the characters feel during them. And this is in part due to the fact that PTerry had help writing it; his wife and other friends helped him finish it (and also Raising Steam). Etiology aside, it's incredibly awkward and alienating to be forcibly removed from the interior of a character we've grown to know so well.

Additionally, the few scenes that don't follow Vimes are back with the City Watch, and their characterizations are similarly hollow. Fred Colon is bizarrely bowdlerized in order to motivate the unngue pot thread. There are no scenes like Fred and Nobby's co-dialogues that secretly set the stage (as in Thud!) or develop the characters (like Angua and Sally, also in Thud!). We come close with Cherry and Igor possibly discussing Old World Beliefs, but it's curtailed almost before it starts. The characters are there simply to say their lines and start the investigation, and bear little resemblance to the characters we've grown to know (compare Thud!, in which Detritus's pursuit of drugs is plot-relevant but informs his personal character as an ex-con and a troll looking to start a family, or where Angua and Sally's co-investigation is an opportunity to demonstrate Angua's neuroses).

Finally, in Snuff, the villains are ambiguous and unimportant. It is ultimately borne out to be Rust the Younger, but at that point it hardly matters. We know the Rusts are rotten, and in fact it's kind of refreshing to see one of them actually commit an on-page crime and get nailed for it instead of vaguely be awful (MAA, Jingo, Night Watch). But it's only Rust Jr. because the book reads like a big collection of callbacks to the other books, pointing to things and going say, remember that? Remember Blackboard Monitor Vimes, and the Summoning Dark, and Lord Ronnie Rust? How about Koom Valley?

Vimes spends the book clearing through sub-villains like a new game plus gamer plowing through midbosses. I had to reread the last half to remember the names of Flutter and Stoner and Stratford and all the other mooks. Working for money is a fine motivation for a villain - see the New Firm in The Truth - but these guys are wholly interchangeable and completely forgettable.

TL;DR Despite Night Watch being the isekai, Snuff is the book where Vimes is the boring invincible protagonist who barrels through people and obstacles with wealth, political power, and literal superpowers yet no interesting motivations, and we don't learn anything and there aren't any cohesive themes and the vast majority of the scenes are shoddily written and I don't care about any of the characters except maybe Feeney Upshot. Night Watch was the culmination of Vimes's personal themes, redundantly made textually explicit in Thud! (unnecessary but still a fun time because all the other shit was rad), and any future City Watch writing should probably have been relegated to elements in the Industrial Revolution books. Or about Angua.