Book Review: I Shall Wear Midnight
Author: Terry Pratchett
Publisher: Doubleday
2021 (First published in Great Britain
by Doubleday 20010)
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Pages: 417
Date Read: November - December ‘25
Main Characters:
Tiffany Aching (A young witch)
The Nac Mac Feegles (A type of fairy folk who help protect Tiffany)
Amber Petty (A young lady who is beaten up and miscarries a baby near the start of the book. She turns out to be incredibly insightful and quickly learns how to understand and join in conversations with the Nac Mac Feegles.)
Roland (The Baron’s son and a friend of Tiffany’s)
Letitia (Roland’s fiancé)
The Duchess (Letitia’s mother)
Preston (A castle guard)
Mrs Proust (An elder witch who runs a shop selling boffo).
Miss Eskarina Smith (Another witch who mysteriously appears having learnt how to manipulate time and space. She tells Tiffany about the creation of the Cunning Man and later passes on the secret of time-travel.)
Cunning Man (A mysterious and sinister character who keeps stalking and hunting Tiffany)
Granny Weatherwax (An elderly witch whom Tiffany previously trained with)
Nanny Ogg (An elderly witch whom Tiffany previously sought help from)
Blurb:
Somewhere, some time, there’s a tangled ball of malice and spite. And it has woken up. Tiffany Aching must defeat this evil, bit if she falls, the Chalk falls with her.
My review:
It took me quite a while to read this book. I kept on dipping in and out of it as I often do with Terry Pratchett books. I’m thankful of the fact that unlike his adult fiction books, his young adult fiction novels are actually written in chapters, but the chapters themselves are very long even if they are also helpfully broken up into sections from time to time. Likewise, I do love the imagery that the author creates but I do also often find that he waffles on a bit too much and adds in a lot of extra unnecessary information. With all of that said I did enjoy the book overall. The main story arch took a while to get going, but I was intrigued by the back story of the Cunning Man as introduced by Miss (Eskarina) Smith and I thought that the symbolic phrase of ‘The hare runs into the fire’ which appears more towards the end of the story, was incredibly charming.
There are clear links between the cunning man, which is the main antagonist, and the historical figure of the witch finder general. Other themes explored are the ideas of outsiders and outcasts being blamed and further ostracized by society, and the social divide between the privileged upper classes and those from more meagre backgrounds. As with all of the other Tiffany Aching novels (This being the forth), there is no shortage of interesting characters and side quests that are somehow magically woven into the main story. Even if you are yet to read the other novels in this series, it would not spoil your enjoyment of what is another incredibly well written book. For me personally, the last two chapters really helped to round off the story and bring all of the loose threads together. The strength and pride oozed out of the main character, and she really took control of what could have been a totally awful situation. That final sense of wholesomeness really helped to bring the story to a close, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it did take me a while to read this book.
Star rating: 4 out of 5.
