The first book about Tiffany Aching, and the thirtieth book in the series, The Wee Free Men sees our young promising witch meet Perspicacia Tick, a witch and teacher, that brings a speaking toad that knows a lot about legal matters. Ms. Tick (and yes, the pun is obvious and intentional) sees the potential in Young Tiffany, and the Nac Mac Feegles, little blue Scottish pictsies (as opposed to pixies) that love to fight, drink, and steal. We’ve met some of them before in earlier books, but they’ve never been as prominent as in this volume.
This book is very much a Discworld fairy tale. Tiffany’s little brother Wentworth is kidnapped by the elf queen, and she’s determined to get him back. He may be sticky and have a limited vocabulary, but she feels a sense of duty to not just her own family, but to the people of the chalk, and to her grandmother’s memory. The book hints early and openly that despite the people of the chalk not being exactly fans of witches, that grandma Aching was one. Her words and actions were respected and even feared, and Tiffany was the grandchild she felt closest to, and when combined with Tiffany’s ability to think and learn, she’s a perfect inheritor of a witchy legacy. She impresses the Nac Mac Feegles early on by defeating a couple of monsters that broke through the boundary between the queen’s parasitic dimension, something we first learned about in Lords and Ladies, and even becomes their leader for a time, when their Kelda, the woman in charge of the clan, bequeaths the mantle to the nine year old Tiffany before passing.
With her aggressive little blue army, a book on sheep ailments, and an iron frying pan, she enters the queen’s dimension to retrieve her brother and kick the queen out of the land that she considers hers. On her way through the various dreams that she is forced to endure and escape within the queen’s realm, she encounters the Baron’s son Roland, who had disappeared not too long ago. The fallout of his disappearance had some unfortunate results from that event; results that ring a bit too true in our roundworld as well.
She eventually confronts the queen on her own turf, and the queen is not happy to see the Nac Mac Feegles, although Tiffany largely deals with the queen without the little blue miscreants when the time requires it. Two of our favorite witches show up right as the book winds down to its conclusion. Their interaction with Tiffany and Perspicacia was one of the highlights of this novel. The results of her time in the fairy realm are bound to have ramifications for the people of the chalk, and for her especially.
I found the constant dreaming aspect of this book to start off strong but it gets a bit tired after a time. Tiffany has a lot of growth for a very young protagonist, and I find her and the Nac Mac Feegles to be the highlights of the book, although the flashbacks to granny Aching were also welcome and informative, as they helped establish Tiffany’s place in the world and her relation to the land and her grandmother’s legacy. As a result, I look forward to the other Tiffany Aching books to come as I read through all the books of the Disc, since she’s such an interesting and compelling character.
Like The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, this book is labeled as ‘young adult’ fiction. It does feel very much like Lords and Ladies toned down a bit for a younger audience. I love Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegles are wonderfully fun, but this book isn’t one of Sir Terry’s best, and my rating reflects that. It’s still worth a read of course, as all Discworld books are, but it isn’t as enjoyable as I was hoping it would be.
3.25 Nac Mac Feegles out of 4.
Some fun quotes:
If you trust in yourself... and believe in your dreams... and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.
“Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it." "No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.”
“The secret is not to dream," she whispered. "The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from, and I know where I'm going. You cannot fool me anymore. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine.”
Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We love comments! Just note that we always moderate because of spam and trolls. It's never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.