The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

“Let’s change it up,” we said in our bi-monthly Shareholders Meeting at Bastard Headquarters. “Let’s do something different. Give the people what they want: POSITIVE REVIEWS.” And thus our radical idea for NICE NOVEMBER, where we would write Nice Reviews about books we like, took shape. It can’t be negativity all the time, after all! Yes, we are born haters, but we only hate bad books with the burning passion of 1000 fiery suns because the truth is we really love good books and reading, and we’d like to share some of those books that we love with you.

Well, it’s about the end of November and you might have noticed we’ve been mysteriously silent until now. Turns out it’s way harder to write reviews for books you like. It’s like. HEY! READ THIS BOOK! Here’s some quotes to show you how good the writing is—whoopsies I’ve posted the whole 375 pages. It’s about This and That and this Other Thing and this character does this but she also does THIS…

At least one of us (me) also ran into trouble in that we had planned to review a much-anticipated new release by a beloved favorite author, except, well, it turned out to not be very good. Which meant both 1. Couldn’t write a nice review thus useless for Nice November and 2. Emotional devastation, disappointment supreme, etc etc etc. I might review that book later but I may also never pick it up again. We’ll see.

So instead I decided to reread an old favorite: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. This is the first installment in the Tiffany Aching series, itself a part of Pratchett’s sprawling 40-something-book Discworld series. I first read this book when I was 10 or 11 and it has been a cornerstone of my literary experience ever since. I often recommend it to people who are looking to get into Discworld for the first time.

The Wee Free Men stars Tiffany Aching, a nine-year-old girl from a family of sheep farmers who live in a place called the Chalk. (It’s called this because, underneath all the sheep and the soft green grass, is chalk.) Tiffany finds out that certain fairytale monsters are appearing on the Chalk and she’s the only one around who can stop them. When the Fairy Queen kidnaps her little brother, she arms herself with a cast-iron frying pan and sets off to rescue him.

I keep writing rambling paragraphs and deleting them because I have too much to say about this book. It’s hard to stay coherent about a story you love! But I will attempt to list what makes this book great.

One: Tiffany herself is a practical and determined heroine who makes for a great character. Her flaws are realistic—she’s selfish and a bit of a know-it-all, for example—but Pratchett also writes these as strengths.

Two: The Wee Free Men, fairy folk who are little blue men that speak what is basically Scots and whose favorite things are fightin’, drinkin’, and stealin’. Also known as the Nac Mac Feegle, or Pictsies (like…pixies…but Picts…get it?). They’re Tiffany’s allies in the fight against the Queen and as a kid I wished they were my friends.

The other Feegles had formed a circle around Tiffany, and this time they’d drawn their swords.

"Whut’s the plan, Rob?” said one of them.

"Okay, lads, this is what we’ll do. As soon as we see somethin’, we’ll attack it. Right?”

This caused a cheer.

"Ach, ‘tis a good plan,” said Daft Wullie.

Three: The sense of humor. I’d post quotes but we’d be here all day.

Four: The sense of place. The Discworld books are comedies in addition to fantasy, so they contain elements from a mishmash of historical periods and places. But Terry Pratchett pulls fun little details from the real world: for example, the ancient sculptures carved into the Chalk, or shepherds being buried with a piece of wool pinned to their clothes. Those sort of things make the setting feel solid and lived-in in a way that most fantasy books don’t manage.

Five: the toad.

I’ll wrap this up for now or I might as well just go ahead and type up the whole book. I hope you all enjoyed this Positive Review For A Book I Enjoyed during Nice November. Stay tuned for Dastardly December, where we return to our regularly scheduled programming, except meaner.