I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
After finishing I Shall Wear Midnight at . . . midnight . . . last night, I realized immediately that I was very sorry to say goodbye to Tiffany Aching and her fellow witches, her family, and even her sheep. But most of all, I was sorry to say goodbye to the Nac Mac Feegle–the wee, free men. Never have I met a more entertaining group of little blue laddies! And never have I been happier to discover a writer I’d been missing out on for way too long. I simply loved this entire series, and can’t wait to read more of Terry Pratchett. Luckily, I have a slew of other books by him to choose from.
This four-book, series-within-a-series has seen Tiffany Aching figure out at age ten that she has inherited her Granny Aching’s witching ability, and exactly what that entails. It’s not so glamorous as you might think. In Tiffany’s world, a witch has a great deal more responsibility for her fellow man than, say, the Wicked Witch of the West, in Oz. A witch helps those who can’t help themselves, and speaks for those who can’t speak for themselves. She does multiple duties as midwife, counselor, visiting nurse, and protector of her “stead.” And Tiffany does it all with humor, panache, and finally, thoughtful wisdom, I might add. By this fourth book, we find Tiffany a young lady of sixteen, ready to be courted, but sadly, minus the young lad she had thought would be doing the courting. The book is a bit “heavier” than the previous three, as Tiffany deals with this, and tries to understand the changes in her life, coming to terms with exactly who she is. But I Shall Wear Midnight is still filled with humor and wit and charm. And the ending is very satisfying, tying up all the loose bits and pieces, and answering my questions about several things mentioned throughout that were confusing, until I saw how they all related to each other. Then, everything made perfect sense, and left me feeling glad to have been along on the journey.
If you haven’t tried any of these books, I hope you will. You don’t know what you are missing until you spend a few hours with Rob Anybody, Daft Wullie, Miss Tick, and Granny Weatherwax. An you really need to visit the little towns of this magical world, like Ham-On-Rye, for instance. How can you go wrong with that? I highly recommend the entire series! It’s marvelous.
I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld)
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Is it new? We read some of these to my son, and he loved them, but I thought Terry Pratchett had passed away.i
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Oh, no, this isn’t new, 23. Pratchett–who is a YOUNG man at a mere 65 and still kicking, from what I can find out–wrote about 40 books in the Discworld series. I’m just very late in discovering how wonderful he is. The Tiffany Aching books are somewhere in the middle, and are a stand alone mini-series, sort of. The books are:
The Wee Free Men
A Hat Full of Sky
Wintersmith
I Shall Wear Midnight
And they are ALL marvelous! I can’t wait to go back to the beginning of Discworld and read everything Pratchett has written.
PS…I should be calling him SIR Terry Pratchett. My apologies to his fans, everywhere.
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i had misremembered. he is still with us, but he is suffering from Alzheimers. i don’t think he’s writing any more. which is a tragedy. but he’s left one hell of a legacy.
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According to his website, he is still making public appearances and doing some speaking. He said in September that he thought his “embuggeration” would be far worse than it is by now. And I believe he was promoting a new book, though by now, the situation may have changed. It is a tragedy, indeed, but thank goodness he was so prolific when younger. He will definitely be leaving behind a wonderful legacy, and for those of us who didn’t find him sooner, we have a lot of good reading ahead of us. Who knows…maybe he’ll get another book or two out yet, as well. (They say he is suffering from a rare kind that has something to do with visual signals. Perhaps his writing skills are still safe. One can hope.)
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Dear friend, I like your review. I do not know how you have time to do all the things, you do.
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Also Dear Friend, I like your comments. I don’t know how YOU find the time to do all you do, what with the long hours in your garden, and your newly revived passion for reading. Aren’t we amazing?? Hahaha.
Thanks for stopping by. Check out Dulce Maria on Who’s Your Granny!
🙂
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