So, I finally finished Snuff today - surprisingly, I found Unseen Academicals to be a more solid book. I liked the new characters (even if Nutt is lacking in flaws, I assumed Glenda and Trev were more of the protagonists?) though I had quibbles about both, quibbles I felt needed to be shared.

Read on if you're curious about my thoughts!

Spoilers Ahead!

Across both books:
A) The villains

Okay, first off I just have to include this line from Snuff:
"I haven't mentioned some of the other conversation between you and Mister Stratford, because Feeney here is listening, and you should be relieved about that; gossip can be so cruel."
I kept reading to find out what the 'other conversation' was about, but... it was never mentioned again!
_{I am so bloody curious about what the hell Vimes was talking about! Seriously, you have no idea.}

And that's kind of my problem: the villains weren't really in either book long enough. Not long enough to be properly menacing, and in some cases not long enough to be clearly defined characters.  I mean, Young Lord Rust didn't appear in Snuff at all, and Stratford had, what, three scenes? In UA this was alright, as the protagonists seemed to be fighting society more than actual people. Andy was a good sports-rival-jerk villain, but never really lived up to his description as a complete psychopath - he just came off more as a run-of-the-mill git - which I felt actually kind of worked with the sports-teams setting. _{Strictly speaking, from a scriptwriting POV you don't need a strong villain in this sort of narrative, since Nutt serves as the "antagonist" (in script-writing terms an antagonist can be good) - as he is a character who comes into the lives of the protagonists (Glenda and Trev), doesn't change himself (really), but they are changed for the better because of him.}

But in Snuff, it's a crime novel so the lack of a proper villainous presence (or a real mystery) made the story lose a lot of dramatic tension. Stratford was never really a good threat, similarly to Andy he was talked up quite a bit - other characters kept saying he was a psycho but when we met him in person he seemed a too bit clumsy and niave to be threatening, mainly because Vimes is just to savvy at this stage.

Also, does anyone else think that Stratford is basically what would happen if Moist Von Lipwig and Carcer somehow had a child?
_{I found this very disturbing, then hilarious.}


B)Out of Character

A lot of DW fans have complained that UA shows a lot of old favourites acting a bit out-of-character, and while it wasn't a huge quibble for me, it was certainly there. Vetinari saying "drunk as a skunk" was particularly odd! Most of the characters at least had one personality throughout the book, so it wasn't too distracting - Lady Margolotta, however, seemed to switch personalities in every scene she was in, which was... weird. When she meets Glenda she's pretty much the character we are familiar with from The Fifth Elephant (sans accent), but then she just keeps swinging from cool and collected to a bit petty and rude. I was left a bit confused as to whether I was supposed to like or hate her by the end. Thankfully she wasn't a main character so it wasn't too bad!

Snuff, however, was a bit worse about this in my opinion. Sybil said "Bitch". Twice! It was bizarre. Also, why did she only start caring about the goblins after hearing Tears of the Mushroom's song? That made her come off really badly in my mind.
Also Willikins... didn't talk like Willikins. He seemed far more like a cheeky Cockney chappie than usual - it honestly was like reading about a different character who was kind of similar to Standard-Issue Willikins.


C) Lack of narrative tension

Both books had this problem, Snuff had the advantage of having the crime to pull it along, but after the goblins were freed I really stopped caring about the laws or what happened to Lord Rust (since we never met him anyway). UA just kind of wandered about, it was like a really long character study in a way - so the ending with the big football match moment seemed out of place. Nutt's crisis where he ran off seemed like it should have been an emotional climax, but it never really worked because no one seemed to care that he was an Orc anyway... and I as a reader felt pretty secure that he wouldn't rip anyone's head off.


D) The Villains' comeuppance :
One main difference between UA and Snuff is that I actually liked Willikins (I suppose having learned more about him gradually through several books helped), but I didn't really like Pepé - both of whom deal with the villains. Pepé felt like a character the reader was just meant to automatically like, but to me he kind of just turned up, got drunk and made kind of skeezy comments in the background for most of the book. Looking back, I don't really see what he had against Andy in particular (as there were other 'Faces' involved, other bullying sorts) - to his credit, at least he didn't kill him.

It makes a lot more sense for Willikins to have killed Stratford, but I kind of felt it was unnecessary. I recalled the end of Night Watch, and this just seemed a bit jarring.

E) Implied Gods... or something?
Stinky and Juliet, glowing blue and gold and the mysterious voices.  It was so vaguely alluded to that I don't understand why exactly it was left in. Were they avatars of gods? Why? What the hell was going on?
Like this, there were things that I thought were going to become important later on that just never kicked off, like:
- Bengo Macarona... in general. (UA) He was introduced, and he had all these doctorates and stuff so I thought clearly he's going to be useful later but... nope, he just got injured during the match and then flirted with Madame Sharn (How does that even work? I thought he liked men, not ambiguously female dwarves?)
- The Summoning Dark - it gave Vimes all these powers and, what? No comeuppance? That seems unfair, especially since the Dark gave him evidence that he otherwise could never have gotten. In a crime novel, that's got to be cheating. (I was secretly hoping that the Dark was a big dirty liar).
- In Snuff, that hermit - why was he in the book? WHY?
- That damn other conversation Stratford and Flutter had. What was it?  _{If you don't clear this up, book,  I've no alternative but to start shipping them.}


So, these were my thoughts! Feel free to let me know if you felt the same way, or differently while reading!