The Wee Free Men

It was a lot of fun to re-read The Wee Free Men at the same time as the Fairyland books. Tiffany Aching and September have a lot in common, and if they were ever to meet I think they'd be friends. Except that Tiffany may have been able to warn September about the fairies. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In this book, nine-year-old Tiffany starts to discover her destiny. Which isn't written in the stars so much as it's written in her bones. Tiffany is the second-youngest child in a large farm family. She was the baby until her younger brother, Wentworth, the long-awaited son, came along and stole all the attention from her. So now she watches him and does her chores and misses her grandmother.

But the the fairy queen shows up and kidnaps Wentworth. And Tiffany, practical, angry Tiffany, who kind of resents her brother for being born, doesn't hesitate to set out looking for him. With the help of the Nac Mac Feegle, the titular Wee Free Men, she begins to learn what it means to be a witch.

Tiffany is not your typical protagonist. Something she recognizes and comments on. She's angry and selfish and a little bit detached from the world. She wants to learn more about the world around her, but she doesn't have any desire to leave home to do so. She loves her family and she's content to make cheese on the farm. She just thinks the world ought to be a bit more fair, and she decides to do what she can to make it so.

Knowing now where her story ends, it's even more exciting to go back to the beginning and see how she starts out. Her first big task, her first time taking on responsibility, and her first meeting with Granny Weatherwax. I've loved Tiffany from the start, and I can't wait to relive her journey - or to share her with my son.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more