Tiffany Aching and her loyal friends, the crazed six-inch Nac Mac Feegle, return in an outing rather less uproarious but more weighty, and thereby possibly more satisfying, than The Wee Free Men (2003). Tiffany, now 11, has left the Chalk to apprentice to a career witch. On the brink of adolescence, she has become more conscious of image, and it is this weakness that leaves her open to attack by a hiver, a parasite that seeks out the powerful, taking over their minds—and killing them in the process. It’s the Feegles to the rescue, a highly dubious enterprise. Pratchett weaves a tale that isn’t afraid to detour into biting satire or to stop and admire a mot particularly juste, but that keeps returning to the critical question of identity—how an individual must embrace her worst aspects to become her best self, how worth is found in works, not in posturing. The great chalk horse cut into the downlands becomes the metaphor for Tiffany’s understanding of this: “Taint what a horse looks like. It’s what a horse be.” By turns hilarious and achingly beautiful, this be just right. (Fiction. 12+)
