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Nine-year-old Tiffany Aching has lost her brother. She also
thinks her late Granny Aching - once a wise shepherd - might
have been a witch. It is only when the Wee Free Men, tiny
blue folk in kilts, turn up looking for the new "hag"
that Tiffany enlists their help to rescue her brother from
the Queen of Fairies...
Terry
Pratchett's latest
Discworld based
novel is entertaining from the start. The Wee Free Men
is supposed to be a book for children, but adults will
find it just as entertaining - probably more so.
As
we have come to expect from Pratchett's previous work, The
Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents for example,
the reader is treated with respect, never patronised and that
is partly why his work is so well received by the young.
While
not entirely original - a little like a cross between Hansel
and Gretel and The Smurfs - The Wee Free Men
is entertaining, humorous and beautifully constructed. Just
how Pratchett manages to see the world through the eyes of
a young girl is anyone's guess, but he does and with such
detail. I began to wonder whether he had spent the best part
of a week wandering around with his hair in pigtails to get
into the part.
At
a time when another famous writer of popular stories about
witchcraft and wizardry is selling her ideas to Hollywood
before she has even managed to bother committing them to paper,
it is refreshing to see that there is one popular author out
there who cares enough about his work to actually sit down
and write books - and do it well.
This
is one of Pratchett's best novels yet. He is arguably the
most outrageously funny author from another plane of existence
writing today. In a time when other writers in the field seem
to be having trouble delivering the goods on time (You know
who I mean - for God's sake she has only written four books
and she is struggling to continue), Pratchett pulls a work
of art out of his conjuring hat yet again.
Darren
Rea
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