The Wee Free Men

I love all the books of Discworld, some more than others but this is the one I love the most. The book always reads like a love story about the land where it takes place. For some people, we have known land that is precious and magical and becomes a part of us. The ridiculously fun Wee Free Men are just a bonus and Tiffany Aching has become one of my favorite characters in the entire collection.

The Illustrated Wee Free Men is a fanciful fairy tale told with an enormous amount of wit and humor. This is the newest version of Pratchett's Discworld story. The original was released as a novel geared for youth, though it is sure to be enjoyed by readers of all ages. Nine-year-old Tiffany Aching is growing up on a sheep and dairy farm and longs for a bit of magic in her life. Unlike the wizards and witches who wave wands and chant spells, young Tiffany offers a healthy dose of common sense and practical determination combined with an unhindered view of the world that allows her to see the realm beyond the ordinary and do what must be done to save her community and her young brother from the evil faerie queen. Tiffany teams up with the fierce pictsies, the Nac Mac Feegle, also known as the Wee Free Men. The fact that the Nac Mac Feegle are blue and only six inches tall does not lessen their status as the most feared warriors amongst all faerie races. They are ruthless fighters, hearty drinkers, and unrepentant thieves who celebrate life and death with equal abandon. Stephen Player's illustrations lend much to the tale and make this version of Wee Free Men a potential collectible. The drawings almost dance along the pages, often inserted as background shadow images or borders along the page. At times, the text on a particular page is re-arranged to accommodate the insertion of artwork in unusual places. Player's depictions of the expressions and physical stances of both Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men exactly capture how I would picture them to be when reading the story. Pratchett's interesting characters have the wonderful habit if popping up now and again throughout his various novels. This continues to be the case with Wee Free Men. Whether you are new to Pratchett's Discworld series, or a longtime fan, I enthusiastically recommend The Illustrated Wee Free Men as one to add to your book collection.

Wee Free Men is a children's book, but in the great tradition of British children's novels: it can be enjoyed by kids and adults alike. For my money, it is Pratchett's finest children's book. In the precocious, ferociously intelligent young witch Tiffany Aching he has created one of the great child protagonists in the genre. In the drinking, thieving, fighting and cussing Nac Mac Feegles, the Pictsies, the wee free men of the title, he has one of the comic forces of nature. The combination will make you laugh out loud. Repeatedly. This 2008 edition brings Stephen Player's illustrations to Pratchett's 2003 novel. In some ways, some of the illustrations are a little too sweet. Tiffany Aching probably isn't that pretty, and I'm completely certain that Nac Mac Feegles are not nearly that clean or cute. But in other ways the illustrations are masterful. Tiffany's "unsuitable boots" are perfect. There are four delightful fold-out pages, the flashbacks are styled as diary pages, and the text of signs are set out as signs. The monsters are monsters, just short of terrifying, especially the dromes and the nightmares. And there's even a bit of new material for those of us who have read (and re-read) the book already. The cameos by the Discworld's most famous witches at the end are spot-on. And Player's copy of "The Fairy Fellers' Master-Stroke" is inspired, even if the Feegle is being vulgar. Too often, illustrations added later simply float over the story. Stephen Player's drawings, to a very considerable extent, add to the pleasure of the book. When Tiffany finds the way into Faerie, the fold-out drawing hides and reveals, just as Tiffany struggles to see with First Sight. Player has brought new and additional delight to a delightful book. Very highly recommended.

If you're already a Terry Pratchett fan (I certainly am), you don't need a reviewer to tell you that you'll like this book. I'd like to address this review to the many many readers who are looking for something really GREAT for younger readers.Tiffany, a 9-year-old witch must save the world with the assistance of a herd of drunken angry red-headed six-inch-tall kilt-wearing Scottish fairies, who bear names like "Slightly Bigger Than Wee Jock But Not So Big as Middle-Sized Jock Jock" and "Rob Anybody."The book is hysterically, laugh-out-loud funny for both younger and adult readers (my family looked at me funny as I was giggling the whole time I was reading it.) Although a girl is the hero, the rambunctious troublemaking Feegles will make the book highly appealing for boys (of all ages) as well.It's actually serious in intent, though, with themes reminiscent of A Wrinkle in Time or The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe series (the villain is a Queen who distorts people's consciousnesses and leaves a trail of frozen weather everywhere she goes). Tiffany saves the world through strength of character and common sense (and hooray for those!) rather than with magic alone.As much as we liked Harry Potter around our house, I think that Wee Free Men is the equal of any of the Potter books. The best "kid" fiction of the year (or longer).

There's Terry Pratchett. And then there's... well, basically, a whole load of other people. But few of these other people can tie you to a story like Terry can. There's Tiffany. And then, well... There's her annoying little brother. Who only wants sweets and to go a-toylut. Of course there's education. If it wasn't there, children would have too much time to play and playing wouldn't be fun anymore. There's also Education. About how life really works (when other people think that things are just as they are, or make perfect sense, it's always interesting to actually take a look...). And then there's Terry on Education with a story of Tiffany and how witchcraft is about what things are really about. About the sound of silence, the comfort of an informed granny and the feel of a snowflake on your pointy nose.There is, well, nothing like it.

"The Wee Free Men" is Terry Pratchett's second foray into Discworld-for-Young-Adults coming a year and a half after "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents" and six months after his last 'regular' Discworld book, "Night Watch". It revisits ground from "Lords and Ladies" and "Carpe Jugulum", which is fine, because with usual Pratchett flair, he tosses in enough wry satire, strange humor and generally good storytelling that you don't always notice when he goes back to some of his older material.While the Nac Mac Feegle (the Wee Free Men last seen in "Carpe Jugulum"), little woad-tattooed Pictsies, do feature in a large chunk of the book, the heroine is Tiffany, a nine-year-old witch's granddaughter and budding witch herself who must be the singularly most sensible (but still likeable) character I've ever read in a book directed at an audience less than 18 years old. She struggles to cope with the death of a grandmother who, even though she died more than a year ago, has still had a huge impact on her life. She also struggles with making sense of the world - both as a young girl and as a human being, and she struggles with the Queen of the Elves/Fairies (last seen in "Lords and Ladies") in what becomes a metaphor for maturity and clarity in a large, scary world. Pratchett's moral is that just because you're not yet officially an adult, it doesn't mean that you can't understand the world any less well. This is a theme he's played with before, but it's always appropriate no matter how many times he brings it out.As a huge Discworld fan, I really enjoyed this book - possibly even more than "The Amazing Maurice...", although it's probably not at quite the same level of literary excellence as his previous work. Fans of Pratchett in general will undoubtedly appreciate his jabs at academia, fairy tales and the Harry Potter series (which future books about Tiffany may someday parody more explicitly). For fans of Discworld, not only are Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegle two of his more interesting creations (which is saying something), but the cameo by Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg at the end is delightful. Missing, though, is the obligatory cameo by Death - possibly for the first time ever in a Discworld book.Anyway, I recommend this book to anyone regardless of age or knowledge of Discworld. As with "The Amazing Maurice..." the Discworld cosmology is relatively light, so if you're not familiar with the Disc, it won't get in the way of enjoying the book. If you are, though, his subtle touches and revisitations throughout the book make it a more integrated work than his last foray into Discworld-Young-Adult. Either way, though, it's a great book.