Wintersmith | Terry Pratchett

Wintersmith | Terry Pratchett | third in the series

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Wintersmith

	Wintersmith Terry Pratchett HarperTeen, 2006 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 82 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

At 9, Tiffany Aching defeated the cruel Queen of Fairyland.

At 11, she battled an ancient body-stealing evil.

At 13, Tiffany faces a new challenge: a boy. And boys can be a bit of a problem when you're thirteen. . . .

But the Wintersmith isn't exactly a boy. He is Winter itself?snow, gales, icicles?all of it. When he has a crush on Tiffany, he may make her roses out of ice, but his nature is blizzards and avalanches. And he wants Tiffany to stay in his gleaming, frozen world. Forever.

Tiffany will need all her cunning to make it to Spring. She'll also need her friends, from junior witches to the legendary Granny Weatherwax. They?

Crivens! Tiffany will need the Wee Free Men too! She'll have the help of the bravest, toughest, smelliest pictsies ever to be banished from Fairyland?whether she wants it or not.

It's going to be a cold, cold season, because if Tiffany doesn't survive until Spring?

?Spring won't come.

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A nice finale

This is the third of the Tiffany Aching trilogy. The books could easily be read individually as Pratchett is a wonderful author, skilled enough to make each book stand alone and at the same time fit together. If you haven't read any Discworld books yet you're in for a treat though I personally would start at the beginning and not the end. Though some people like to eat dessert first...

third in the series

How to write about a Pratchett book without it degenerating into incoherent fangirly squeeing? I'll try, but I'm not making any promises.

This is the 3rd Tiffany Aching book, which is a subset of the Discworld series. Tiffany is a young witch-in-training.

In Wintersmith, Tiffany turns 13, which is a difficult enough time in any girl's life. But Tiffany's not just any girl, so things are exponentially more difficult. Her biggest problem starts when she (unintentionally, to be sure) steps into the dance between the Wintersmith and the Summer Lady, resulting in her taking on some of the attributes of the Summer Lady, and in the Wintersmith falling in love with her.

Then her current mentor, Miss Treason, announces that she'll be dying soon, and the race is on to decide who should take over her cottage. Tiffany is likely the best qualified, but Annagramma is older and more likely to be accepted by the locals.

Enter Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg. Granny manipulates things in her usual twisted way, and Nanny is her usual blend of practicality and earthiness. And of course there are the Nac Mac Feegles, who are just hilarious.

Wintersmith is a young adult novel, but that's mostly because the heroine is 13. The story is universal enough and complex enough to appeal to adult readers as well.

Tiffany takes responsibility for a serious mistake--she gets advice and help along the way, but ultimately, she has to fix the problem herself.

She also has to bite the bullet, swallow her pride, and focus on what's best for everyone in the long run rather than what makes her happy now.

Both of those are lessons that aren't limited to young people--they're not easy for us grown-ups, either.

*sigh* Instead of squeeing, I ended up synopsizing. Sorry about that. It's a great book. I'd recommend reading Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky first, and maybe a couple of the Discworld witch books too, so you're familiar with Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, but you probably don't have to.

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Tiffany's New Boyfriend

I've already read just about everything by Terry Pratchett I can get my hands on. Several times. From "The Carpet People," to "Making Money." I love the worlds Mr. Pratchett's fertile imagination creates. His characters are as real as they can be, people from regular life, just on a different world.

I bought "Wintersmith" in the audio version, so I could listen to someone else's interpretation, to augment the voices and personalities I "heard" in my mind when I read the book. Stephen Briggs does a magnificent job of reading into the prose the subtleties and nuances of each of the characters.

The story is wonderful, the reading is great, and it makes the miles go by quickly as I listen on my iPod (tm). If you're already a Pratchett fan, I recommend the adventures of Tiffany Aching, as she does her best to convince the Wintersmith that she really doesn't need a cold-shouldered boyfriend at the moment. Read it or listen to it, you'll enjoy it.

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Delightful!

This is a story about Tiffany Aching, a young witch in training. She stumbles into a situation with the god of winter in which she becomes his first crush. She must rectify the problem before a major disaster is made of the seasons and the people who are subject to the weather's whims. She learns what it means to be a competent witch along the way.

Very enjoyable story. Fun, irreverent, touching.

The Big Wee Hag is back, and is she ever frosted!

What happens when the Wintersmith (discworld's version of Jack Frost) falls in love with a teenage witch in training? Why, he makes snowflakes in her likeness, of course...and then he snows them down on the world by the billions, until the land, the houses and even the sheep are buried in them. And what does a young witch do when she is showered with this sort of attention? Well, she gets very very embarrassed. The whole sordid and hilarious mess is right here in the third book of the Tiffany Aching series: another great young readers novel by Terry Pratchett. You'll have to read the book to find out how Tiffany deals with the affections of the Wintersmith, and all the ways he/it tries to win her love, and how the Nac Mac Feegle come to help the "Big Wee Hag" out of a truly elemental mess. Just be prepared to do a lot of laughing along the way.

- C.A. Wulff, author of Born Without a Tail

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