Terry Pratchett no longer writes comedic fiction

He now writes mildly amusing morality plays. There is little that is more incongruous than an atheist who insists on telling other people how they ought to live. His latest work, Snuff, is no exception from the general rule that his more recent books contain less humour and more preaching than his early books did. He's spent a lot of time busily rehabilitating all the monsters and villains of his early books and making them tragically misunderstood and this time it's the goblins' turn. Spoileration to follow.

Vimes goes en vacance to his country manor that became his when he married into wealth and position way back in Men at Arms. During this time he finds that there is a murder intended to keep him from discovering a smuggling operation and that the goblins are being enslaved because no one considers them different from animals. There's nothing really wrong with any of that, except that it's not very funny. But the same can't always be said about his other themes and some of the minor ones in this book are equally pernicious.

This book continues a pattern that started with Reaper Man whereby Pratchett takes a character that was used as a foil in earlier books and makes it sympathetic. At first, these books were interspersed with the others, but they have come to dominate. Death was turned from the Grim Reaper into a genial old man who likes Thai food and kittens. The wizards were transformed from being crotchety, dangerous and ancient devotees of the arcane into bumbling Oxford dons. The trolls were domesticated, dwarves experienced women's lib and vampires ended up as teetotalers.

Pratchett wrote a whole book dedicated to the proposition that, really, there isn't any difference worth speaking of between men and women unless you're interested in the beast with two backs. Thud! was a book about how a little kindness and understanding can overcome all those irrational racisms we have. The Fifth Elephant was about those dangerous fundamentalists who think that there are some things that are irrevocably right and wrong and they're willing to kill, murder and steal to preserve them. Essentially, it was your run-of-the-mill "religion-is-bad" book. The Last Hero took the theme of The Fifth Elephant and turned it up to eleven. ("Eleven, eleven, right across the board.")

The world that we fans fell in love with that was the world of Sourcery and Pyramids and Guards! Guards! is no more. It's been cleaned up and turned into a sort of atheist libertarian's utopia. It used to be messy, dangerous and, most important of all, funny. Now the books Pratchett writes are slightly amusing and ever so preachy.

This most recent book not only rehabilitates one of the last remaining groups that Pratchett had (I guess his next book will have to make kobolds respectable), it further reinforced his permissive libertarian nonsense about sexual relationships. This installment has Vimes and his wife discussing the burgeoning romance between Nobby Nobbs (who, despite the vicious descriptions of him is clearly indicated to be human) and a young goblin maiden. I suppose if one posits that the various peoples of Discworld are all human in some fashion, merely different (very different) races, that wouldn't be too much of a stretch, but Pratchett clearly wants to point a moral at our modern life and make it applicable to something other than anti-miscegenation laws. An excerpt from a conversation between Vimes and his wife regarding Nobby and the goblin maid.

"But she's a goblin!" said Vimes, out of his depth.

"And he is Nobby Nobbs, Sam. And she is quite attractive in a goblin sort of way, don't you think? And to be honest, I'm not sure that even Nobby's old mother knows what species her son is. Frankly, Sam, it's not our business."
...
"Yes, but I mean-"

"Don't worry, Sam! There's a troll and a dwarf in Lobbin Clout that have set up home together, so I've heard. Good for them, I say, it's their business and definitely not ours."

"Yes, but-"

"Sam!"

If you can't tell what moral he's trying to point with that, you've been living in a cave the last five years.

Pratchett suffers from Alzheimer's, and will probably not be writing too many more books, but even if he manages to crank out a few more, I'm not sure I'll bother with them any longer. He had a good run, but, like a successful American TV show, he didn't know when to quit and rode it into the ground.