I Read Books: The Shepherd's Crown

 

The Shepherd’s Crown

Granny Weatherwax dies. As not-the-leader of witches, there’s no explicit successor. And that non-explicit successor, at least to her cottage and steading, is teen witch Tiffany Aching.

Tiffany has to do her duties on the Chalk and up in the Ramptops. And she’s already spread thin. So when Geoffrey Swivel arrives looking to see if men can do witching, it’s not quite a change she can make. But she can take him on as a “backhouse boy,” a servant. And he spreads calm wherever he goes and he helps the old men from feeling useless and forgotten by having them make things in sheds.

With Granny Weatherwax gone the Elves consider returning, trying to take over the world. A goblin defies them, telling them how the railways are laying down iron across the land. When the elf queen decides to be cautious she’s overthrown by Peaseblossom and exiled. She meets Tiffany who tries to teach her not to be so elf-like (murderously selfish).

The final novel by Terry Pratchett, in the afterword his assistant notes that although it has all the necessary parts, Pratchett would have written more if he had had longer. Still, it’s complete and we should take it as that. It’s a little bitty, a series novel insisting on bringing in and using earlier characters and ideas. Many of these slot in smoothly, but others stick out. Tiffany has to stop the elves again, and maybe elves are redeemable, maybe, but it doesn’t quite come together. Still better, funnier and more interesting than most comic fantasy.

Read This: It’s a good Discworld novel, and presumably you’ve read others
Don’t Read This: As your first Discworld novel