Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd’s Crown, Doubleday/Random House, 27 August 2015, 352pp., $45.00 (hbk), ISBN: 9780857534811
This is the final volume in the Tiffany Aching series, the 41st Discworld novel and the last book completed by Terry Pratchett before he died in March this year. I have always enjoyed the Discworld series even though they varied in quality, they were never short on satiric humour, an overarching love of humanity and a pitiless dissection of human failings. As Neil Gaiman said, ‘A Terry Pratchett book is a small miracle’ and in this case particularly so.
This is the last of the series which started with The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, and I Shall Wear Midnight. The book has a melancholy beginning with the death of Granny Weatherwax, particularly poignant when you realise Pratchett was writing this when he knew his own death was imminent. The whole episode is beautifully and movingly written, filled with a quiet joy and a firm affirmation of the rightness of ending. Interestingly, the book is dedicated to her: ‘for Esmerelda Weatherwax – mind how you go,’ the first time in my experience that a book has been dedicated to a fictional character.
Tiffany inherits the cottage, the cat and the mantle of top witch but she finds it hard going as there are twice as many demands on her time and skills. There is no time for her relationship with Preston to develop, very little time for her to realise what all these changes mean for her. There are changes in the big wide world as well. Iron in the shape of big noisy wonderful trains and railways are altering the land. Goblins, erstwhile enemies of humans, are now working with them to keep the machines going. But the real problem lies with the elves. All of Pratchett’s skill as a writer is evident in his complex description of the paradoxical nature of the elves: they are beautiful but evil, cold but immensely attractive, totally selfish but apparently able, in the case of the queen, to begin to appreciate what friendship means.
The story slowly increases in intensity until the final battle between the elves and the humans (helped along by the wee free men). The shepherd’s crown of the title is a little sea urchin fossil handed down in the Aching family since time immemorial. Tiffany uses it to connect with her homeland’s heritage to gain the strength to defeat the elves. It is what defines her – her name means – ‘land under wave’. This long connection with the land and the elements of earth, air, fire and water are the threads that anchor Tiffany and help her work out who she is, what she wants and what her place in the world is.
This is an appealing story for those who grew up with reading The Wee Free Men where Tiffany is nine years old. It does have some elements which are of more adult interests but the Tiffany storyline is strong enough to carry the younger reader along. A fitting finale to a much loved series, only marred by the sad knowledge that there can be no more additions to the Discworld. Vale Terry Pratchett.
Reviewed by Mia Macrossan