Low Fantasy, Young Adult

Review: I Shall Wear Midnight

Jay
Cover of the book, featuring a pair of hands holding fire, the arms in a black robe and three small blue-skinned men with wild red hair hiding in the sleeves.

Title: I Shall Wear Midnight

Series: Discworld #38

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Low Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, death of parent, injury, fire, body horror, miscarriage, teenage pregnancy, child abuse, suicide attempt

Spoiler Warning: This book is 38th in a series and 4th in the Tiffany Aching sub-series. This review may contain mild spoilers of the previous Tiffany Aching books (The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, and Wintersmith), but not any other Discworld books.

Back Cover:

It starts with whispers. Then someone picks up a stone. Finally, the fires begin. When people turn on witches, the innocents suffer …

Tiffany Aching has spent years studying with senior witches, and now she is on her own. As the witch of the Chalk, she performs the bits of witchcraft that aren’t sparkly, aren’t fun, don’t involve any kind of wand, and that people seldom ever hear about: She does the unglamorous work of caring for the needy.

But someone or something is igniting fear, inculcating dark thoughts and angry murmurs against witches. Aided by her tiny blue allies, the Wee Free Men, Tiffany must find the source of this unrest and defeat the evil at its root before it takes her life. Because if Tiffany falls, the whole Chalk falls with her.

Chilling drama combines with laugh-out-loud humor and searing insight as beloved and bestselling author Terry Pratchett tells the high-stakes story of a young witch who stands in the gap between good and evil.

Review:

The Tiffany Aching books all have a pattern. Some sort of magical evil being or force comes to the Chalk or after Tiffany herself. Tiffany must gather information and figure out what the thing is and how to stop it and rein in the Nac Mac Feegle while doing it. And then even though Tiffany is a child, she has to deal with it herself, occasionally advised but never helped by the older witches. And then, obviously, she deals with it. I don’t feel like that is a spoiler because the book never really has any doubt – it tries to make it sound like Tiffany could fail, but the reader knows she won’t and the real question is just how she does it.

In this book, Tiffany is 15 (and turns 16 somewhere during the story). She is The Witch now, coming into her own as the witch of the Chalk but still not entirely sure how to balance a witch’s duty of caring for others with taking care of herself. All throughout the book people were pointing out that Tiffany had to take better care of herself if she wanted to effectively help others, but I don’t elevate that to a theme because it never gets resolved. Tiffany does not take any of the advice, and in fact does not get a good night’s sleep until the last few paragraphs of the book.

All the attempted themes were a little muddled in this one. I think “it’s okay to ask for help when you need it” was trying to be a theme, as Tiffany needs to get the help of several people through the course of the story, but that’s undercut by the fact that if she were to ask another witch for help, they would lose all respect for her. Tiffany gets help from non-witches, but the “being a witch means dealing with everything yourself” message counteracted the “it’s okay to ask for help” message.

This book also introduced a lot of new and interesting characters: Roland’s fiance and her horrible mother, an abused girl from town who is definitely … something, a witch from Ankh-Morpok, and a guard at the Baron’s castle who is way smarter than he pretends to be. Esk from Equal Rites even made an appearance as an adult. I enjoyed all the new characters and dynamics in play, and I found myself really liking Preston, the guard. I’m hoping they all show up in the next Tiffany Aching book.

There’s only one Tiffany Aching book left, and even though I’m sad I’ve almost come to the end of my adventures with Tiffany, I have really high hopes for it. It’s also the last book in the Discworld series, though, so I’m considering waiting until I’ve read the rest of the series to make it a capstone of sorts for my Discworld reading experience. But I may just get too excited about reading more about Tiffany. We’ll see.

The Discworld series:

  1. The Colour of Magic
  2. The Light Fantastic
  3. Equal Rites
  4. Mort
  5. Sourcery
  6. Wyrd Sisters
  7. Pyramids
  8. Guards! Guards!
  9. Eric
  10. Moving Pictures
  11. Reaper Man
  12. Witches Abroad
  13. Small Gods
  14. Lords and Ladies
  15. Men at Arms
  16. Soul Music
  17. Interesting Times
  18. Maskerade
  19. Feet of Clay
  20. Hogfather
  21. Jingo
  22. The Last Continent
  23. Carpe Jugulum
  24. The Fifth Elephant
  25. The Truth
  26. Thief of Time
  27. The Last Hero
  28. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
  29. Night Watch
  30. The Wee Free Men
  31. Monstrous Regiment
  32. A Hat Full of Sky
  33. Going Postal
  34. Thud!
  35. Wintersmith
  36. Making Money
  37. Unseen Academicals
  38. I Shall Wear Midnight
  39. Snuff
  40. Raising Steam
  41. The Shepherd’s Crown