Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
book, review, discworld
This review was originally posted at Goodreads and imported here later with next to no spell/grammar checking.
5/5 stars
“It will be our fault if we see something wrong and don’t do anything about it.”
It seemed I got through this book quite quickly so I had a look at when I started reading it: two days ago! It’s been a while since I got hooked this much.
Tiffany Aching, now almost thirteen, is a witch in training. Almost completely by accident, she attracts the attention of the Wintersmith — a winter elemental who starts courting Tiffany, rather than his summer counterpart.
The plot starts strong and moves quickly. We get another wonderful look into what it actually means to be a witch in Discworld, how young witches that were training alongside Tiffany in the previous book all fare, as well as the real reasons behind the Morris dance.
Like the other more recent Discworld books, it is not as funny as the earlier ones, but it is a delight to read and sometimes it still does bring you to laughter. Tiffany’s reading of a romance novel and being puzzled by how impractical everyone was being in it was an utter delight.
Wintersmith has a distinct marking of a fairy tale. I mean, it does contain literal fairies (although of the blue-skinned red-beard kilt-wearing Scottish-sounding variety), but also: it’s just a lovely story of gods and people and hearts and bravery and snow. Lots and lots of snow.
It’s the third book in the Tiffany Aching series and while you could probably read it standalone, it’s better to read the previous two. It brings the people and events together.
