Wintersmith

Terry Pratchett was a prolific writer and published no fewer than 41 novels in his Discworld setting from 1983’s The Colour of Magic to The Shepherd’s Crown that was published in 2015. It contains a bunch of separate story threads, many of them tied together into series - like the Moist von Lipwig trilogy, the series on Sam Vimes of The City Watch, and the Tiffany Aching series that I’ve been reading recently.

I just finished the third Tiffany Aching book Wintersmith, after accidentally reading book four (I Shall Wear Midnight) out of order. Story-wise that is not a problem, as each Pratchett book is a complete story on its own (do you hear that, Sanderson? A 300-page novel that finishes an entire story - what an idea!), but the backreferences to wintersmith were so prominent that I was eager to hear about Tiffany’s adventures as the love interest of the god of winter.

One of the reasons I love the Tiffany Aching series is that it shows her and other characters develop over a longer period of time than most of Pratchett’s works do. This book is another example of showing such growth both for Tiffany (both as a person and as a witch) and Roland (stepping out of his role of mansel in distress towards his role as future ruler). Stephen Briggs’ narration was spot-on as usual, the pacing was great, the Nac Mac Feegle are good for many laugh-out-loud moments - I loved it all.