Pratchett is a wordsmith. He creates a divine world into which he spins his stories... stories of magic, where seasons have personalities and can become ... almost human. This is the case of the Wintersmith, when young witch Tiffany Aching leaps into the midst of the winter dance and takes the place of Summer. Wintersmith is captivated by her and wants to become human so as to be with her. He starts courting her with wintery magic, including millions of little Tiffany snowflakes. But as Granny Weatherwax knows, a season becoming a human can be dangerous...I like these books. They are simple but sweet, profound yet funny, and full of unforgettable characters -- in this case, a witch who digs her own grave (literally). Tiffany is a delightful heroine -- sweet, sincere, intelligent, and kind, with an unusual amount of insight into The World.As for the rest? Well, what can I say except CRIVENS!!

Having read the final Tiffany Aching story I realised that among the Discworld books I'd missed were the earlier Tiffany Aching stories so I decided to start putting that right. Needless to say I'm reading them in the wrong order however this is Discworld...I guess my favourites stories in the early Discworld books tended to be the Witches books (Death ones aside) so finding that these "childrens" stories contain Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax make them worth reading for that alone. Pratchett's sense of humans and the way they behave is so well worked into these tales that they are great reads for me. Of course it is "good v bad" although this being Discworld some of these borders are a little doubtful however it is the minutiae of life that make the reading so good. I'll read the remaining ones when I get the time.

I'm trying to write reviews again, instead of just ratings and status updates -- my problem is I always want to write The Exhaustive Review, and so wind up writing none. UH WHOOPS. I figure I'll start small with this book.I had real difficulty getting into the story -- I didn't like the tone of the combined narrative voice/Tiffany's thoughts very much (it felt sort of simultaneously dumbed-down and punched-up for the YA market, and I missed the usual sarcastic undercutting tone of the footnotes). Perhaps because this is the third book of a trilogy? and I hadn't read the first or second books (I know, I know. But the first Discworld book I read was Night Watch! and I didn't really read a lot of the rest in sequence. I think this is one of the few series where that actually works). I....really didn't like Tiffany as a character that much. I liked her interactions with Nanny and Granny, altho Nanny seemed terribly PG and Granny a lot more manipulative than usual....well, no, Granny's very manipulative, something about it just left a bad taste in my mouth here (and possibly it was supposed to). I did like the points made in other good reviews, that the Tiffany books are largely about responsibility, that Granny tests Tiffany possibly as a successor, and there are many and varied older female characters. A lot of the writing at sentence-level style is very good, there are striking and lovely images that turn into almost extended meditations on the book's themes, and I loved Miss Treason and You and Roland. But the book didn't really click for me enjoyably until about the last thirty or forty pages. (My very favourite part was Roland and the Feegles in the Underworld, especially when they started singing 'row row row your boat....') Perhaps part of the problem for me is that Wintersmith and Summer were, by definition, rather empty elemental archetypes. There are many charming and hilarious bits, but for some reason it just didn't all jell into a whole for me, and I never warmed* to it.Also, altho this is possibly very superficial, it bothered me that it was divided into chapters -- I got used to Discworld books just sucking me away into the world of the story and not spitting me back out til the tale was done, and altho Pratchett used narrative convention very skilfully (after umpty-ump very good books, he'd better), it just jarred on me constantly. Also also, I am the girl with a splinter of ice** in her heart, because I am apparently the one person on the planet who found Horace tiresome rather than amusing.*Yes, I did that on purpose.**Yes, I also did that on purpose.

The third book in the Tiffany Aching stories is better than the second and remedies the gaps present in the first book, although I think 1 and 3 are probably about tied in terms of craft and execution.My BIG gripe with this book is the setup. There was no reason for Miss Treason not to tell Tiffany what the dance was at the start. Tiffany reacted by instinct to a situation for which she was unprepared, and then she spent the rest of the book accepting personal responsibility for the havoc that resulted. But she hadn't made that decision with full knowledge, and I honestly wish she had. Miss Treason was stubborn about not telling her what was going on, whereas through the rest of the story she was pretty forthcoming with information, and I found that a little disingenous on the part of the author.(Another quibble: I disliked the music they played briefly throughout the audiobook. There was no reason for it and I found it distracting.)The overarching story, though, deals with a lot of complex emotions and gives Tiffany an interconnectedness with the world that was lacking in Wee Free Men. In WFM she acted mostly alone; in Hat Full of Sky she was an outsider looking on at the world. In this story, however, she's woven into the fabric of the witching community, and she both gives strength to and derives strength from the other witches so it's not coming all from within herself.The scene with the chickens and the cornucopia is probably the funniest scene in all three books to this point. I even backed up and played it again for my Patient Husband. bwuk. Comic gold.Overall I really enjoyed this. On with the binge-listening.

I remember very much enjoying this book <3