I wrote this review a couple of months ago and submitted it to an SF journal. After weeks of waiting I eventually heard back that it was accepted, but since then I have heard nothing so rather than deprive the world (haha) of my views of The Wintersmith (because that journal might very well not produce any more issues), I'm going to go ahead and publish it here. Excuse the length but it is rather thorough.
Terry Pratchett’s The Wintersmith can variously de described as the third Tiffany Aching novel, the fourth of the Young Adult Discworld books and the thirty-fifth Discworld novel. As the story begins, we find Tiffany Aching aged thirteen and still serving as an apprentice witch when, one night, due to a fit of childish pique, she unwittingly attracts the romantic attentions of The Wintersmith (the creature responsible for causing the Discworld’s winters) and has to protect herself from his unwanted advances while helping a friend to realise that being a witch is about more than spells and silver jewellery.
In order to understand and fully appreciate Terry Pratchett’s work it is necessary to place it in its correct context. However, a glance at most critical investigations of Pratchett’s work reveal a reticence to dig any further than the rather crude observation that while the Discworld novels originally set out to mock traditional fantasy, they have actually turned into an excellent fantasy series in their own right. But to place such a crude narrative on the evolution of Pratchett’s writing is to fall into the same trap as the medieval monarch who completely overlooks the scathing criticism heaped upon him by his own court jester simply because the criticism is phrased as a joke and delivered by a man with bells in his hat.
A more thorough critical analysis of Pratchett’s works reveals not just a desire to mock the more ridiculous characteristics of the fantasy genre, but a subversive and critical track record that puts to shame that of contemporary fantasy enfant terribles like China Mieville. For example, while Mieville’s Perdido Street Station (2001) and Iron Council (2005) respectively address the question of racial relations and the inherent political conservatism of the fantasy genre, these have been staples of Pratchett’s works for over a decade. Indeed, Ankh-Morpork’s technological change and drift into multiculturalism is clearly a reaction to the fact that modern fantasy continues to uncritically accept the pre-war attitudes to race and social change that characterised the works of Tolkien and Lewis. For where Tolkien’s protagonists were good-natured racists who fought to keep the world from changing, Pratchett’s fight the forces of conservatism who would keep the old racial hatreds alive [1] and those who try to prevent any kind of technological innovation [2]. If truth be told, if one were to impose a single narrative upon the evolution of Pratchett’s writing it would not be a move from mockery to seriousness but from nudge-nudge, wink-wink implicit subversion of genre tropes to a more explicit stance. Nowhere is this stance more obvious than in Thud!, a book whose open political commentary on contemporary issues in British race-relations in the wake of the 2005 7/7 bombings is a world away from the familiarity and escapism offered by much of the fantasy genre. However, while this change in focus may have helped to convince some mainstream critics that SF and fantasy are not purely escapist literature, it also seems to have motivated Pratchett to write more straight-forward fantasy novels aimed at a younger audience. The Wintersmith, like its prequels The Wee Free Men (2003) and A Hat Full of Sky (2004), is part of Pratchett’s series of books aimed at younger readers. However, this does not mean that it is childish or even adolescent in its complexity.
The Wintersmith continues Pratchett’s tradition of incorporating into his work what he calls “Stealth Philosophy”, namely the exploration of big ideas through the deceptively accessible medium of the comic novel. This book features a number of interesting ideas including the very Pratchettian themes of the power of belief to shape the world [3] and the idea that stories can have real metaphysical substance and can actively reach out and control how people live like some kind of memetic Bird Flu [4]. While the latter concept provides the justification for The Wintersmith’s obsession with Tiffany Aching and effectively serves to drive the plot forward, it is intriguing to note that it is not what the book is “about”.
As the book begins, young witch Tiffany Aching is 13 and, unsurprisingly given her age, the book largely devotes itself to the idea of becoming an adult and all that this involves. The aspect that gets the most “coverage” is Tiffany’s increasing competence as a witch. Indeed, by the end of the book she is more or less considered to be ready to run her own cottage (thereby nicely setting up what the next Tiffany Aching book will be about). Traditionally, Pratchett has portrayed the witches as approaching any problem, be it natural or supernatural, with a clear head and a good dose of common sense. Again, these are typically Pratchettian in that they are the characteristics that bind together all of Pratchett’s protagonists from Granny Weatherwax to the under-used Susan Sto Helit and even Kirsty from Pratchett’s non-Discworld Johnny Maxwell series. However, here these qualities are not simply those that the character possesses, they are also seen as the traits that intelligent adults possess and are therefore worth aspiring to. As Pratchett puts it:
“Tiffany was angry. Miss Treason hadn’t shouted, hadn’t even raised her voice. She’d just sighed and said, ‘Foolish Child,’ which was a whole lot worse, mostly because that’s just what Tiffany knew she’d been.” [5]
Tiffany even takes it upon herself to instil those values in a fellow young witch named Annagramma who was trained to do “magick” and to wear lots of silver jewellery rather than to deal with people and their problems; the true nature of a witch’s life. In addition to acquiring the traits of an adult, Tiffany also divests herself of many of her childish traits. Gone, for example, is the constant thinking about Tiffany’s witch grandmother Granny Aching and in one particularly moving scene, Tiffany realises that she no longer needs a necklace left to her by her grandmother, as these are but “trinkets”. However, when Tiffany comes to believe that she is free of the Wintersmith, the necklace promptly turns up. When Granny Weatherwax asks Tiffany for her necklace, the girl thinks:
“Every stick is a wand, every puddle is a crystal ball. This is just a… a thing. I don’t need it to be me.
Yes, I do.
‘You must give it to me,’ said Granny softly. ‘I can’t take it.’” [6]
Only for her later to realise that:
“I don’t need this, she thought. My power comes from the Chalk. But is that what life’s going to be like? Nothing that you don’t need?” [7]
This sequence suggests that the necklace represents Tiffany’s childhood and her innocence of the world. Pratchett is suggesting that being an adult means being able to walk away from your childhood. When you are ready to make difficult decisions and to sever old bonds with the past then you are free and an adult but this does not mean that you can ever escape your childhood for, much like Tiffany’s necklace, it has a habit of turning up when you least expect it.
Pratchett’s ideas about becoming an adult are complex and portrayed in a largely symbolic fashion. Indeed, The Wintersmith is very much reminiscent of Lucile Hadzhihalilovic’s 2004 film Innocence that portrayed the female journey out of innocence through the symbolic use of a fictional and distinctly strange boarding school. However, while Hadzhihalilovic’s teenaged girls inhabited a world where men and played no part (lest it be an inappropriate one), Tiffany Aching’s arrival in adulthood is intricately linked not just to her involvement with the nominally male elemental the Wintermsith but also her childhood friend Roland.
Roland initially appeared in the first Tiffany Aching novel as a prisoner of the Queen of the Elves. Since then, Roland has taken to writing much awaited letters to Tiffany, who keeps these hidden and refers to him only as “Just a friend… sort of” [8]. In this book Roland undergoes a similar parallel journey into adulthood that first sees him protecting his father from other members of his family and then taking a trip into the underworld to help save Tiffany whilst taking hero lessons from the profoundly masculine Nac Mac Feegles. Roland and Tiffany never meet up in The Wintersmith. Indeed, Tiffany talks a lot about him and thinks about their relationship quite a bit but Roland himself is conspicuous by his absence. This is because the relationship between the Wintersmith and Tiffany represents all the bad relationships humans involve themselves in as they grow up until they finally work it out and are able to have a proper grown-up relationship.
Like all teenaged boys, the Wintersmith has no idea of how to be a man. In the early stages of the book, he attempts to display his affection for Tiffany through grand gestures but when he actually deals with her face to face, the results are disastrous. The Wintersmith then goes away and tries to gather information on how to be a man and eventually settles on an old children’s rhyme about the chemical composition of a human. By trying to seduce Tiffany, he actually begins to turn her into an elemental in her own right but Tiffany never gets there… she no more suits the Wintersmith than the Wintersmith suits her. Indeed, the Wintersmith’s true partner is his fellow elemental Lady Summer but all he can see is Tiffany and his attempts to woo her only drive her further away and do more and more damage to the people unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire. Clearly, this relationship where the two potential lovers are of completely different metaphysical types is symbolic of all the bad relationships we have as teenagers when we’re not sure of what we can and can’t do or we get fixated on the wrong person and wind up projecting our unhappiness onto the people around us. The only way out of this nightmare is for Tiffany to learn the story of the relationship and work out how to end it. It is even more telling that Tiffany works out where she stands both with regards to Roland and the Wintersmith from the libidinous Nanny Ogg who is the only witch to treat Tiffany’s problem as a relationship problem rather than as a magical one, driving home the importance placed by Pratchett on common sense and emotional intelligence over book-learning. Indeed, it is interesting to look on The Wintersmith as an answer of sorts to Hans Christian Andersen’s fable The Snow Queen. In the original fable, the boy is seduced by the magic of the Snow Queen and it is left up to his childhood love to save him with the warmth of her heart. In both cases the winter elemental represents bad relationships but whereas the original strikes a reactionary tone by idealising the purity of pre-sexual love, Pratchett sees bad relationships as something that you need to get out of the way before you work out what you want and who you want to be with. However, this book is more than just a wealth of symbolism and subtext. It is also, as the crude analyst of Pratchett might put it, a fantastic fantasy novel in its own right.
The Wintersmith is not only funny and well constructed as a story; it also boasts the same rich and compelling characterisation that is present in most of the Discworld series. However, a marked trait of Pratchett’s work is that the most interesting characters in the book are rarely the book’s protagonists. Indeed, much like Heinlein’s Competent Men, Pratchett’s protagonists are invariably Sensible Girls who stand apart from the world they inhabit. In structural terms, the reasons for this creative tic are fairly obvious; namely that Discworld books are not about the central character but about the world they inhabit and the jokes and ideas that flow from the weirdness of the Discworld itself. Instead the protagonist serves as a platform from which the reader can explore the Otherness of Discworld. In fact, it is this very characteristic of Pratchett’s writing that makes The Wintersmith so interesting from a technical point of view because unlike many Discworld novels, The Wintersmith is about the psychology of the central character. However, in a quintessentially genre move, Pratchett decides to explore the psychology of his protagonist by projecting her mental state and her coming of age process onto a battle with a magical entity. But the cleverness does not stop there as Tiffany also engages in moments of introversion as she literally as well as metaphorically tries to understand herself. The fact that Pratchett can engage in such soul searching without compromising the Sensible Girl character of Tiffany is only possible thanks to her witch’s capacity to have not just second thoughts but third thoughts as well. The result is that as well as the usual Otherness of the Discworld, there is also a grey area between what is clearly the Discworld and what is clearly the Sensible Girls core of Tiffany’s personality. This grey area is not only made up of the metaphorical Wintersmith (which represents Tiffany’s potential relationships with teenaged boys) but also the different levels of Tiffany’s own personality including her memories, her self-doubts and her childish whims. It is a testament to Pratchett’s technical skill as a writer that not only does this literary device in no way feel contrived or heavy but it still does the job of his standard protagonist by allowing him to explore not only his world and his ideas but also the personalities of his older more established characters such as Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg (who, once Sensible Girls in their own right, now serve as role-models for Tiffany as well instantiations of the Otherness that is the adult mind from Tiffany’s teenaged perspective).
So, this book is funny (I counted at least six laugh out loud moments), well written, complex, it skips along at a brisk pace that makes it incredibly difficult to put down and for anyone who has ever read any Pratchett before, to slip between its pages is akin to retiring to one’s bed after a long day or sitting down for your favourite dish. In fact, this familiarity is the book’s only problem, as there hangs over it a terrible feeling that we’ve been through all of this before. The familiar themes of stories taking over people, the power of belief and the true nature of witchcraft ignite memories of novels past such the later Witch novels where Agnes Nitt struggles to come to terms with what it means to be a real witch while trying to deal with the peer pressure exerted upon her by her Goth witch friends who think being a witch is all about “trinkets” such as cool names and black outfits. Indeed, what is the character of Annagramma apart from Diamanda Tockley from Lords and Ladies with the serial numbers filed off? In fact, many of the book’s themes such as Boffo and the nature of a witch’s relationship to her village have been explored through Pratchett’s idea of “headology”. The only difference between the ideas explored in the Wintersmith as opposed to earlier mainstream Discworld novels is that the ideas are presented in a different and more accessible manner that is less reliant upon the readers being familiar with such things as psychology. Indeed, when Granny Weatherwax explained the basics of headology, it was clear that this was a joke about psychology, but when Tiffany Aching explores the need for people skills and emotional maturity, the ideas are presented as if it is the first time the reader might encounter them. While this makes for a familiar and unchallenging read for your average grown-up Pratchett fan, it does make sense and Pratchett manages to beautifully balance the need to talk directly to kids with the need to tell a good solid Discworld story. Indeed, this balance is pitched so perfectly and the writing, characterisation and tone are so spot-on that it’s only after you finish the book that you realise that you’ve sat through a lecture, which is exactly as it should be.
The Wintersmith is a joyous and technically stunning book from a writer who continues to produce brilliant work that belies his reputation as a writer of escapist comic fantasy. With quality levels indistinguishable from the mainstream Discworld novels, the Young Adults series is rapidly finding its feet as a series of comic fantasy novels that replace the parent series’ challenging and increasingly subversive attacks on the fantasy genre with a more avuncular desire to set kids on the right path by hinting at some of the lessons they are going to learn in life. So now you’ve got no excuse for not buying this for your younger relatives.
[1] Reaper Man (1991), Men at Arms (1993) and Thud! (2005)
[2] The Truth (2000), Going Postal (2004) and the up-coming Making Money.
[3] Small Gods (1992)
[4] Witches Abroad (1991) and Hogfather (1996)
[5] The Wintersmith, page 69.
[6] Ibid. page 189
[7] Ibid. page 191
[8] Ibid. page 117
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