Snuff

Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'

Snuff has been sitting on my shelf for a while. It's towards the end of the Discworld series (only one, possibly two more after this), and I was waiting for the right time to pick it up. I'd even started re-reading the series already and was debating digging into this one around the time I got to Guards, Guards! so I could contrast Vimes at the beginning and end of his arc. But then the world went to shit, or maybe it's always been shit, but at any rate shit went down in Ferguson, MO, and I spent a lot of time reading tweets and first-hand accounts and critiques and criticisms and falling into a deep sadness. And one of the things I saw being circulated on the fringes was that quote up above. So I decided it was time to read this book, to see if it might help heal my soul a little. Discworld tends to be good for that kind of thing. It shines a light in the dark places of society but manages to remind you that all hope is not lost.

What is normal? Normal is yesterday and last week and last month taken together 

The book follows Sam Vimes as he, somewhat reluctantly, takes a vacation with his wife and son to their country estate. He immediately bristles at the strict class divides between master and servant, landowner and tenant. They exist in the city, of course, but Vimes has spent his whole career trying to change that and the feeling of stepping back in time is disconcerting for him. Of course it isn't long before he uncovers a smuggling ring, complete with a trade in slave labor and capped by a murder meant to frame him and get him out of the way before he sees too much. But Vimes is smarter than that, and, thankfully more mature.

I tell you, commander, it's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.

He, of course, finds the murderer, busts apart the smuggling ring, and stops the slave trade, proving that goblins are people too. The ending is aggressively optimistic, with everything tied up with a neat little bow. And while that's nice, and part of what I read fiction for, it made it hurt that much more to come back in the real world. On the Disc, a species can prove that they have souls when a single member performs beautiful music. A single performance can change the world and the law. But I couldn't help thinking back to Never Let Me Go, where the artwork of dozens, possibly hundreds, of clones failed to prove to anyone that they were anything more than organ donors. The real world doesn't change that quickly.

And now, because of a song, Vimes, a simple piece of music, Vimes, soft as a breath, stronger than a mountain, some very powerful states have agreed to work together to heal the problems of another autonomous state and, almost as collateral, turn some animals into people at a stroke.

There's also the matter of Vimes, who is thankfully one of the good guys. He's truly good, with a strict moral compass and a need to help the little guy. So it's okay that he bends the law, stretches it, invents it as he goes along. We're rooting for Vimes, and we know he'll make the right choice. He has the power and he chooses to do good with it. He also has the backing of his incredibly rich wife and the all-powerful Patrician. He can, essentially, do whatever he wants. And I couldn't help but think of all the people in his situation who aren't anywhere near as good as him.

… you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.

The optimism that made this book such a great escape also made it frustrating at times. Some of this is addressed, very briefly, at the end. But it wasn't quite enough for me. Though I suppose that's why this is classed as fantasy. Not because there are werewolves and trolls on the police force. But because the people in power always make the right decisions and are constantly making the world a better place.

What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term [civilian] these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians, the only other thing they could be was soldiers.