Fic recs!
Discworld, this time.
First, The Brain Thief is such a perfectly Pratchett story, you'd almost believe someone stole the manuscript for Discworld: The Next Generation from his desk. It follows Young Sam Vimes a good twenty years from when we saw him last as he unwinds a gruesome mystery in Ankh-Morpork. The way the author has built up the future of the city and the children of its inhabitants is fantastic. Absolute love for this one.
Second, and more sobering, is Unwound. The author takes a quote from The Last Continent and fleshes it out. The quote in question is: "Sybil pinched the bridge of her nose. Most of her would not have considered Sam Vimes guilty of murder, actual murder, even on the evidence of three gods and a message written on the sky. But... stories did get back to her, in a roundabout way. Sam got wound up about things. Sometimes he unwound all at once. There had been that... bad business with that little girl and those men over at Dolly Sisters, and when Sam had broken in to the men’s lodging he found one of them had stolen one of her shoes, and she’d heard Detritus say that if he hadn’t been there, only Sam would have walked out of the room alive...
Yeah, it's a dark one. Nothing graphically described, just the aftermath of a particularly heinous crime, but that's bad enough. Sam Vimes and his officers come through beautifully, as does an off-the-screen Sybil. Great storytelling.
Finally, for those who don't know, Pterry himself has published the opening of the next Watch novel, Snuff. I enjoyed the heck out of it. So, without further ado: Snuff!
First, The Brain Thief is such a perfectly Pratchett story, you'd almost believe someone stole the manuscript for Discworld: The Next Generation from his desk. It follows Young Sam Vimes a good twenty years from when we saw him last as he unwinds a gruesome mystery in Ankh-Morpork. The way the author has built up the future of the city and the children of its inhabitants is fantastic. Absolute love for this one.
Second, and more sobering, is Unwound. The author takes a quote from The Last Continent and fleshes it out. The quote in question is: "Sybil pinched the bridge of her nose. Most of her would not have considered Sam Vimes guilty of murder, actual murder, even on the evidence of three gods and a message written on the sky. But... stories did get back to her, in a roundabout way. Sam got wound up about things. Sometimes he unwound all at once. There had been that... bad business with that little girl and those men over at Dolly Sisters, and when Sam had broken in to the men’s lodging he found one of them had stolen one of her shoes, and she’d heard Detritus say that if he hadn’t been there, only Sam would have walked out of the room alive...
Yeah, it's a dark one. Nothing graphically described, just the aftermath of a particularly heinous crime, but that's bad enough. Sam Vimes and his officers come through beautifully, as does an off-the-screen Sybil. Great storytelling.
Finally, for those who don't know, Pterry himself has published the opening of the next Watch novel, Snuff. I enjoyed the heck out of it. So, without further ado: Snuff!