Snuff - Terry Pratchett

The latest Discworld book, starring Sam Vimes. Usually one of my favorite Discworld characters, but somehow I didn't love him quite as much in this book as I usually do. Possibly because this story was a bit bleak, and I wasn't always sure he was going to survive...and I was sometimes worried that something horrible was going to happen to Sybil or young Sam. Possibly I will enjoy this more when I re-read it one of these days, but I was definitely a bit anxious - especially because the villains in the Sam Vimes books are truly bad and don't tend to stay captured. Also, Vimes has become a rather powerful character, so in order for things to actually threaten him, they need to be extremely dangerous.

On the other hand, there were many things I absolutely loved about this story - Willikins is a fabulous character and gets into the action a bit more than usual. The goblins are just wonderful. Vimes figuring out how to deal with the Summoning Dark is pretty fascinating too. Possibly my favorite aspect of the Vimes books nowadays is the fact that young Sam & Elli are the same age, and Pratchett has taken to publishing some of the books Vimes reads to young Sam - and so I've been reading them to Elli. We're currently reading "The World of Poo" and Elli seems to find it every bit as entertaining as young Sam, although thank goodness she isn't even a little bit interested in starting her own poo collection...mostly just in giggling every time the word poo comes up. Then there's Sam's relationship with Sybil, which is just wonderful. Every love story should end up this way, in a marriage where there is a huge amount of mutual respect. And the fact that they both go about changing the world in their own totally different, yet very complementary ways.