Discworld and Member Articles
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Written by maljonic
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Sunday, 31 December 2006 |
A book review of Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett
By Steve Wishnevsky - I'm not sure I agree with his opening two paragraphs, I could be biased though...
Terry Pratchett is an almost unknown writer who may be the greatest comic fantasist in the English language. He has written 33 books concerning the Discworld, a conceit that started out as a parody of formulaic fantasy, developed into a free-ranging satire of almost every human endeavor, and now has morphed into, as he admits, an "even I don't know what it is now" sort of thingy.
People who love fantasy hate him with the true hate, and people who love human comedy love him. The corpus of his imagination has grown so large, perhaps 3 million words, that there are now sub-genres in his work. And, unlike any other writer this side of Mark Twain, he gets better all the time.
One endearing trait is that he will toss in a character, or a species of characters, just for a lark, and then five books later, that character will become the focus of a book, and the embodiment of a human frailty.
And his characters, like Walt Kelly's swamp critters, are so outrageously human. His elves are Picts, his trolls are Cockney gangsters, his vampires go to AA, and his witches ... witches are complex.
Witches are people who know things. They don't do magic, that would be too easy. Wizards do magic, and wizards are silly old men. His witches get things done.
Pratchett's latest mini-series within Discworld concerns the coming of age of one Tiffany Aching, who is becoming a witch on the sheep-herding moors of "The Chalk." In the current book, she is "almost thirteen," a most dangerous age, and has foolishly dared to dance with the Wintersmith.
And the Wintersmith, need you ask, is an elemental being who creates winter. By daring to attract his attention, Tiffany has come to embody Lady Summer. This entraps her in "The Story," in myth, out of which she must escape.
Her allies in this escape are several older witches, Nanny Ogg and Mistress Weatherwax, and a tribe of the "Brave Fee Men" who might be pixies, if pixies spoke with broad Scots burrs, were 6 inches tall, and blue. Of course, and it's all so obvious, "The Story" demands that someone go to the afterworld and free Lady Summer to take her rightful place and bring Spring at its proper time. Or else the sheep will die.
Which would all devolve into metaphorical rubbish, except for the extreme sensibility and silliness and humanity of all involved.
Here is one quote, ending a chapter after Tiffany buries her mentor witch: "Tiffany sat on a stump and cried a bit, because it needed to be done. Then she went and milked the goats, because someone had to do that too."
Which somehow fits in the same book with an animate blue cheese named Horace. Horace wears a tartan. He is Daft Wullie's pal, of course. Don't worry about it. Just read the book(s). Three million words, and most of them are pretty darn funny.
• Steve Wishnevsky is a musician and writer who lives in Winston-Salem.
www.journalnow.com
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