The thirty-eighth book of the Disc is also the fourth Tiffany Aching book. Our young witch is a bit older, being sixteen years old now, and once again has to grow as both a person and a witch to deal with a threat to the chalk, and beyond.
*Trigger warning* While Sir Terry doesn’t get into violent detail; there is a portion of the book that deals with a teenage girl named Amber and the beating she gets from her father over her relationship with a young man. It gets grim at points, but thankfully doesn’t dominate the book, it is nevertheless something to be aware of before reading.
People on the Disc both need and fear witches. Witches get a lot of things done for people that have nothing to do with performing actual magic but instead focus on helping out with the everyday. An old man needs his nails trimmed, an accident-prone lumberjack needs a leg stitched up, a first-time mother needs more than just a midwife, and so on. Good witches do all that and more, which earns them gratitude in the form of old clothes, food, and other such thing (witches never ask for money), but also a lot of distrust. The witches know about your personal problems. They know about things you’d rather keep secret. And that antagonistic feeling that always lies under the surface is bubbling up.
Tiffany notices this growing problem with concern, but she’s not the only witch that takes note. She already has her hands full as a sixteen-year-old girl who is also a witch and has a complicated relationship with Roland, who soon becomes the baron as the old baron passes on, and she doesn’t really need this new threat. But deal with it she must, or it will certainly deal with her.
Roland also has a lot on his plate with his father dying, the feeling of downright disgust with witches that seems to be infecting almost everyone, his complicated relationship with Tiffany, and of course the arrival of his fiancée Letitia and her overbearing mother, the Duchess. That’s a lot for one person to handle in the first place, but since Roland is also barely out of his teens, it hits him extra hard.
Our assortment of characters includes the always wonderful Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax, who arrive for the funeral and wedding proceedings. Nanny even helps Letitia with what to expect after the wedding, since she’s very good at dealing with such encounters, and always has her own hilarious twists on things. Speaking of Letitia, my first impression of her was not great, but we quickly find out she’s much more than just a sobbing, hollow young noblewoman, and she ends up being an excellent character with a lot more depth than her introduction would imply.
Two other great new characters are Preston and Amber. Amber is the unfortunate victim of a drunk, angry father as I mentioned in the preamble warning, but she really grows into her own thanks to the help of Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegles. Preston is a very clever young man who is one of the Baron’s guards. He and Tiffany have a lot of fun interactions that elicit both laughter and a smile as one sees their interactions grow into something more as the story progresses. Speaking of the Feegles, they are here and wonderful as always, and Jeannie, their Kelda, is a huge part of what helps Amber heal. Their role here is smaller than usual for a Tiffany book, but no less important for its brevity.
Tiffany is visiting Ankh-Morpork and while discussing things with Eunice Proust, a city witch that she encounters as part of her business there, when we discover the source of the ill-will that abhors all witches and is directly focused on our young protagonist. Tiffany once again must deal with a mysterious force and despite aid from others along the way, she must largely do it on her own. On her way out of the sticky situation she finds herself in, she even meets Eskarina Smith, the young girl we read about all the way back in Equal Rites, and the only woman know to be both a witch and a wizard. Her unique abilities allow her to push Tiffany on the correct path to deal with this new adversary, and it was a joy to encounter her again.
Tiffany does have help in understanding and opposing her foe, but the final confrontation with this foe is her responsibility alone. The Feegles are never far from her, even when she instructs them otherwise, and she does end up working with others that showed up for various reasons, but she runs the show once things come to a head, and she knows that she cannot fail, and not just for herself or her beloved chalk, but for all witches on the Disc, including those that aren’t even born yet.
Once I had read to the point where the situation Tiffany was in and her having to deal with another strange entity was obvious, I admit that I was disappointed at first, but that didn’t last once I got past that initial reaction and kept reading. There are five Tiffany Aching books in total, and this is the fourth one, so I haven’t read her fifth and final Discworld book as of writing this review, but this book is definitely my favorite of her series by a comfortable margin. Between the introduction of excellent characters like Preston and Letitia, the development of Tiffany’s own story and her various relationships with the other participants, and Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax being their amazing selves, this book is another excellent volume of the Disc and Tiffany’s story arc.
3.875 Cries of ‘Crivens!’ out of 4.
Some fun quotes:
She heard him mutter, "Can you take away this grief?"
"I'm sorry," she replied. "Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for."
"Oh, I feel very angry a lot of the time," said Tiffany, "but I just put it away somewhere until I can do something useful with it."
If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.
Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.
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