I Read Books: The Wee Free Men

 

The Wee Free Men

The Wee Free Men, the Nac Mac Feegle, a tiny race of blue tattooed, vaguely Scottish fairy folk, made a previous appearance in Carpe Jugulum*. When Tiffany Aching starts to encounter odd fairy creatures she smacks one with a frying pan which impresses the Feegles. There’s no witches on the chalk country as Miss Tick, a wandering witch knows, but of course there are always witches. Previously the role had been taken by Granny Aching, a shepherd who had the respect of everyone. But she died.

The Feegles recognise her as a hag (witch). Their Kelda is dying and her daughter can’t take over (due to the enormous ratio of males to females all the male Feegles are her brothers or uncles) so she appoints Tiffany until a new Kelda can come from another clan. At the age of nine she finds herself queen of an ungovernable gang of violent, thieving, indestructible six-inch high fairies.

Then her brother is kidnapped by the Queen of The Fairies and she has to go and rescue him. It’s a fun fantasy novel, deliberately aimed at younger readers than the usual Discworld novels.

Read This: For Fantasy with something to say about fairies, sheep, growing up, power and witches
Don’t Read This: There are better, deeper and more serious books on those topics, including by Pratchett (maybe not about sheep)

* It’s interesting that they appear later in Carpe Jugulum, the vampire invasion Witches novel and not Lords And Ladies, the earlier fairy invasion Witches novel. The obvious reason for their non-appearance is that Pratchett had not come up with them yet; it’s my occasional contention that his most interesting work comes when he returns to a topic. But Lords And Ladies was already packed with fairy lore, so them being a non-vampire sub-plot in the vampire novel made them stand out more interestingly, then allowing them to take centre stage in this fairy / folklore story.