Book 89 of 2012: I Shall Wear Midnight

I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett is the very last of the Discworld books that I currently own (never fear, this won’t be the case for long, as soon as I’ve gotten Christmas out of the way I shall be ordering Snuff and Dodger which’ll mean I’ve got another month or so before I need to worry about removing the entire Discworld collection from my bookshelf to make room for something else). I actually bought this copy in Oxfam in Dunoon on the day that we got Tara, when I was reading the very first book in the Tiffany Aching series.

This one is the latest in the series featuring Tiffany Aching, in each book she’s a little bit older, putting her around fifteen or sixteen now. She’s back on The Chalk now, where she grew up, and she’s their witch. She’s like a little mini Granny Weatherwax, but there’s something going on that seems to be turning people against her and so, with the help of the Nac Mac Feegle, she’s got to deal with the Cunning Man (and with the fact that Roland is going to get married).

“The problem with getting angry at Nac Mac Feegles was that it was like getting angry at cardboard or the weather; it didn’t make any difference. She had a go anyway, because by now it was sort of traditional.”
Page 41

I kind of dragged out reading this one, mainly because it’s the last one of the Discworld books that I’ve got and I’ve not found the others in charity shops yet so I’ve been holding off buying them. I guess I wanted to make it last. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, I did. A good sign of that is the number of quotes that I’ve squeezed into my book journal, and also the fact that I had to keep on reading out random chunks of the book to Mr Click (I’m going to have to get him reading the Discworld books, it’ll save me so much time).

“As she rolled up her sleeves, he said, ‘You’re not going to turn me into anything unnatural, are you, miss? I wouldn’t want to be a spider. Mortally afraid of spiders, and all my clothes are made for a man with two legs.’”
Page 124

This one is quite a bit darker than the other Tiffany Aching books. I got the impression that this was something different right from the very beginning which has Tiffany dealing with the thirteen year old girl who has been beaten by her father, causing her to lose the baby that she was carrying. Tiffany’s come a long way from when she was a nine year old girl, beating up the Queen of the Fairies with a frying pan, and I suppose the readers who have followed Tiffany since then have grown up too. It took a little bit of adjusting to at the beginning.

“‘Oh… well, only a tiny wee lie, ye ken, hardly a lie, just something that wouldnae be good for ye tae know.’
Tiffany turned to Mrs Proust, who was grinning. ‘The Nac Mac Feegles feel that the truth is so precious that it shouldn’t be waved about too much,’ she said apologetically.”
Page 178

I really would have liked to have seen more of Nac Mac Feegle. Since The Wee Free Men there just never seem to be enough of them for me. I’d quite happily read an entire book just about them, so unless that happens I’ll probably never be satisfied. I liked that there was a trip to Ankh-Morpork in this book, and that we got to see the Watch, especially Mad Wee Arthur. Eskarina Smith from Equal Rites also crops up in this book. As I was reading it I was thinking ‘is it? It’s not. It won’t be. Ooh, but it might be’ and I was right.

“Roland was staring at Tiffany, so nonplussed he was nearly minused.”
Page 257

There was also a new character, at least I think he’s new, I don’t remember seeing him before, in the shape of Preston. He’s really smart and funny and a perfect companion to Tiffany, they complement each other. I really hope that there’s another Tiffany Aching book because I’d like to see more of them together. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if there wasn’t another one, the way this one ended seemed quite a good place to leave Tiffany and I don’t think I would be too disappointed if we didn’t see Tiffany again.

“They landed by the pigsties, to the usual ferocious screaming of piglets, who believed that no matter what is actually happening, the world is trying to saw them in half.”
Page 380

The copy I’ve got has different covers to the other ones I have in this series so far, and I really like it. The inside back cover shows all of them and each one has Tiffany in her green dress looking a little bit older. When they’re all shown together like that it has a good effect; though the cover of this book kind of gives away the ending, when you know what happens or if you look at it very carefully.

“It is important to know where we come from, because 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.”
Page 423