Terry Pratchett is a fantastic author. He's an expert story teller, and I envy his ability, his use of language and nearly constant wry humor. His writing partner in a couple books Neil Gaiman describes Terry Pratchett as a man of enduring fury, carefully bottled rage. Not the "funny old elf" casual observers think he is. He writes about very serious subjects. He writes about corruption, racism, madness, slavery, treachery, incompetence, evil, philosophy, justice and injustice. Its beautiful writing, deceptively humorous because all that rage drives it. A Terry Pratchett novel wins awards. And it deserves to. He's a great writer because he's been at it for decades and tries very hard to craft his very best. Not "good enough" but best. Imagine if Charles Dickens had been paid for quality rather than by the word so he said more in fewer words, carefully chosen? That is what Pratchett is like.
I envy his ability as a writer, but I know that he worked very hard at this. It wasn't talent that makes him a great writer. It was decades of hard work. To be a great writer, like a great guitarist, is practice, practice, practice. I really appreciate his efforts which is why I'm a fan. He makes me wonder if I can turn my anger and outrage at how things are, into humor the way he did. Because Terry Pratchett is slowly dying and in a year or two or three there won't be anymore books. And that will be terrible because he's become exquisitely good at it by this point.
The novel Snuff is about slavery, racism, and butchery of thinking people that smell terrible. It makes you ashamed of any racist thoughts you have had. Because Racism is as easy as it is wrong. All political parties commit this sin, and its human nature to divide people into Us and Them. Lots of experiments prove this. You can't stop it, either. I think this is one of the reasons that Communism always fails. "They weren't doing their share. We suffered, and they were lazing around. Why should We be the only ones to work? Maybe we should stop working too?" In the post 9/11 world those are easy thoughts to have, despite how shameful they are. Perhaps in a world without terrorism we could have proper social justice, but eliminating terrorism requires action by the police forces from the countries of origin to stop them, and arrest the seditious murderers recruiting them, who are mostly holy clerics of Islam running charity schools.
Snuff is about those police, and the trouble of convincing people to reject their racism and act to stop things, from your own side of responsibility. Snuff is also about tobacco, the kind that comes in little boxes and is sniffed up your nose and gives you cancer eventually. Tobacco plantations used to be tended by slaves here in the USA, after they stopped exporting debtors from England, in the days before it was banned. The English banned slavery before we did, because they didn't have any plantations in England and instead bought things grown on them, removing themselves from the morality of the cotton clothing they adored made from the labor of slaves here. Did you smell hypocrisy when you learned that? Yes, I do too. Slavery was never legal in California, btw. Pratchett pokes at the hypocrisy of the tobacco buyers pretending to be superior for buying the efforts of slaves, in exactly the same way that buyers of smart phones in the USA pretend to be superior despite the efforts of Chinese slaves. If you don't make it yourself, how do you know it isn't made by slaves? Ahem. Just a point to consider before you plant that smug look on your face.
I strongly recommend this book, both for humor and quality of writing as well as the moral message is provides. There's a lot of important truths in Snuff and I'm really going to miss Sir Terry when he dies. He's one of the good people, no matter how angry he really is.
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