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Saturday, 12:46 am in Books & Comics

“Yes!  I’m me!  I am careful and logical and I look up things I don’t understand!  When I hear people use the wrong words I get edgy!  I am good with cheese.  I read books fast!  I think!  And I always have a piece of string!  That’s the kind of person I am!”

Quoted From: Terry Prarchett, 'The Wee Free Men'

I’m afraid I have a confession to make.  A dirty little secret, as it were.  Because, you see, though I’ve been a fan of Terry Pratchett since I was a wee tyke, I have to admit I’ve never read one of his young adults books.  Ever.

Yesterday when I was in the book store I decided that it was time to rectify this terrible sin of omission, and picked up the first of the Tiffany Aching books, The Wee Free Men.  It only took me about an evening to read, but in that time I was reminded why I love Pratchett; there was more sheer humanity and intelligence in 318 pages that in the entire over-written under-thought Harry Potter series put together.  WFM makes quite a few not-very-subtle jabs at Rowling (Pratchett has a known animosity towards her novels) – such as Tiffany waiting for unicorns to take her away to a magical place where she can learn to be a witch – and a few slightly-more-subtle ones; the two biggest themes of the story (thinking and personal responsibility) can pretty much be seen as direct criticisms of the brainless, consequences-free ‘adventures’ the Hogwarts crew get up to.  Don’t get me wrong, they also work in their own right and are similar to themes in my other two favourite children’s books – Coraline and Eight Days of Luke – but they also throw Rowling’s work into sharp and pitiful contrast.

Pratchett is often praised for his ‘inversion’ – his ability to turn what’s ‘expected’ around – but honestly I think there’s one thing he does a lot better than that, and it’s really fucking excellent characterisation.  I always feel instant connections with Pratchett’s characters in a way that I rarely experience with other books.  And this is also where I think he leaves Rowling for dead.  Much gets made of Harry Potter as some kind of ‘everyman’ character, but honestly I think everyone who tries to come up with that argument is either braindead or doesn’t know what ‘everyman’ is.  Potter is not an everyman.  He is, instead, the Mary sue we all wish that sometimes we could be.  He’s got some stupid magical Cinderella backstory.  He’s good at things without really trying.  He gets away with stuff (way too much stuff).  We might want to be Potter, but ultimately we aren’t him.

I am Tiffany Aching, and I suspect a lot of other people out there are as well.  Sure, I don’t have an army of tiny, blue, drunken picts pictsies at my feet, but I think too much and know more words than I can pronounce.¹  Tiffany gets through the vast majority of the book by being eminently sensible – a trait she shares with most Pratchett heroes.  She’s not always right or ‘good’, but she’s determined to do things because, if not her, then who else?  Like Coraline, she understands that love is more than syrup a lot of people think it is; sometimes love is hard, and selfish, or awkward or otherwise not very much like love at all.

Like a lot of Pratchett’s later books, there is also a strong current of science running through Wee Free Men (which may seem odd for a book that is essentially about faeries), both in Tiffany’s insistence on evidence to verify the claims in fairytales, as well as things like the Land-Under-Sea and the Chalk.  It’s almost scary to think that the ‘average’ Discworld inhabitant (and this includes, incidentally, the aforementioned Nac Mac Feegle) apparently has more scientific knowledge than, say, the average American.  Thinking and the seemingly contradictory ideas of seeing things as they are and not taking them at face value (First Sight and Second Thoughts) both play important roles.

WFM is essentially a character driven book – primarily by Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegle, since most everyone else has cameo roles – which is good because I suppose if it has one weak point it’s the fact that we’ve seen the plot before.  I mean, duh we have and I think that’s half the point, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the story is one part Labyrinth and one part Narnia.  I mean, sure, the elements that are lifted are essentially universal to a lot of folklore, but that doesn’t change the fact that when most people read this those are the two stories that are going to jump immediately to mind.  Which isn’t to say this is a weak book – quite the contrary, in fact – and true to its own promise, it stands up to some Thinking after the last page is closed (unlike my aforementioned bugbear, which seems to become more ridiculous the more it’s dissected).

So yeah, excellent story, good introduction to the Discworld, you all should go out and read it right now.

Oh yeah, and I love how Kidby’s cover gives a clue as to the identity of the toad.  

1. When I was in primary school, a friend and I were obsessed with a book called Heads and Tails which contained a character called the Hypotenuse (a kind of anthropomorphic stegosaurus with three square-diamonds on its back; the middle one being the sum size of the outer two).  Since we had no idea what a hypotenuse was, we called it the ‘Hyper-tense’. ^

• Tags » books, discworld, harry potter, j.k. rowling, reviews, terry pratchett, tiffany aching
• Comments By » ~Belinda [h], Blaize
• Mood » thoughtful