Book review: “The Shepherd’s Crown” by Terry Pratchett

I am of several minds about this review, or, as Tiffany Aching would phrase it, I’m having First Thoughts, Second Thoughts and Third Thoughts.

On the one hand, I’m thinking that The Shepherd’s Crown, the 41^st and last of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, is its bloodiest.

Consider this scene midway through the novel when the elves of Fairyland have broken through to raid the human world and have snatched a baby named Tiffany Robinson, a baby named for and watched over closely by Tiffany, the witch of the area known as the Chalk.

Tiffany’s broomstick could not go fast enough. In a piece of woodland she found the group of three elves toying with the little girl, and what was inside her was not anger. It was something more forensic than that, and as the stick went onwards, Tiffany let her feelings flame up…and release.

The elves were laughing, but as Tiffany swooped down, she sent fire blazing from her fingertips and into them and watched them burn…If she met any more elves that night, they too would be dead.

Tiffany is a young women, maybe 21, and, like the other witches in the Discworld novels, she rarely uses her magic powers. Indeed, she, like most of the other witches, spends the bulk of her time helping people in need: the poor, the hungry, the dying, the ones giving birth, and even old men who need help clipping their thick, ugly toenails.

But, here, she is an avenging angel, and she takes no prisoners.

This is a prelude to a war between the elves, led by an evil presence named Peaseblossom, and the humans, led by Tiffany and the other witches, a war in which many elves die brutally and bloodily (and often comically) — as well they should, according to the ethos of the book.

 

Nothing so bloody

None of the earlier Discworld stories were as bloody — or judgmental — as The Shepherd’s Crown.

In the four previous novels featuring Tiffany — The Wee Free Men (2003), A Hat Full of Sky (2004), Wintersmith (2006) and I Shall Wear Midnight (2010) — she engages in individual combat with outside threats. In three of the stories, she kills the attackers or helps them to die in an assisted-suicide way, but, in The Wee Free Men, the Queen of the Elves survives her losing encounter with Tiffany.

The Queen, named Nightshade, shows up in The Shepherd’s Crown, defeated by Peaseblossom and thrown out of Fairyland. She is befriended by Tiffany and learns what friendship is. Then, in the war at the end of the novel, she is brutally slain by Peaseblossom whom, himself, is killed by the King of the Elves in a “careless and casual use of violence.”

Not only do Tiffany and the witches inflict much more pain and violence in this novel than characters bring about in the other Discworld books, but — very unusual for Pratchett — they also find the elves detestable and not worth living.

 

Even non-people are people

One of the strongest threads through Pratchett’s Discworld books is how non-human beings — such as goblins, golems, dwarfs, trolls, werewolves, vampires and the undead — are just like people and, in fact, are people.

For nearly thirty years, from 1983 through 2015, Pratchett wrote wittily, pointedly and wholeheartedly about how those on the outer edge of society are just as “human” as everyone else. In novel after novel, a new sort of outsider is worming his/her/their/its way into everyday life, and, aside from some bumps and bruises, the outsider finds welcome, even if only so the work no one else wants to do can get done.

So, it’s startling that Pratchett finds elves so abhorrent.

And it’s startling that he used his last novel — Pratchett died of early onset Alzheimer’s on March 12, 2015, and The Shepherd’s Crown was published posthumously five months later — to spell out how much they don’t belong in human society.

 

To care is to be human

I think this is because Pratchett saw elves as the worst of sapient existence.

In his Discworld, they can produce a surface glamor that is attractive to humans, but, under the surface, their only goal is to inflict pain, small and large. They are without empathy, without loyalty, without compassion. Their joy is in the agony of others. They are only out for themselves.

This, I think, was the message of Pratchett’s last novel:

That those who only care about themselves aren’t really human, even if they are, and that those, like Tiffany, who care for others, who don’t act high and mighty, who are willing to be of service to others, who see themselves and others as part of the same family — these are the most human humans.

Even if they are goblins, golems, dwarfs, tolls, etc.

 

My second thoughts

I first read The Shepherd’s Crown within days of its publication in August, 2015, and wrote a review in which I described it as “pure Pratchett, in no sense a second-class citizen among its brothers and sisters in the Discworld canon.”

I’d read all of the Discworld books by then, but in a hodgepodge fashion.  Since then, I’ve read all of the books in their order of publication, and I came to this final book this second time with a feel for how the series had grown, matured and evolved.

And I found The Shepherd’s Crown thinner than the books that had gone before it. And, yet, I also found it a tribute to Pratchett’s skill as a novelist and determination as a writer to complete, as far as he could, this last book while he was increasingly suffering from the repercussions of his illness.

 

A melancholy experience

It was a melancholy experience to read this again, especially since the early pages recount the meeting of two of Pratchett’s greatest characters: Granny Weatherwax and DEATH.

Granny, because she was a witch, could see what was on the horizon and had spent the day cleaning everything to be ready for the visit.

ESMERELDA WEATHERWAX, YOU KNOW WHO COMES, AND MAY I SAY IT’S A PRVILEGE TO DEAL WITH YOU.

“I know it is you, Mister Death. After all, we witches always knows what’s coming,” said Granny, looking down at her body on the bed…

ESMERELDA WEATHERWAX, WE HAVE MET SO MANY TIMES BEFORE NOW, HAVEN’T WE?

“Too many to count, Mister Reaper. Well, you’ve finally got me, you old bugger. I’ve had my season, no doubt about it, and I was never one for pushing myself forward, or complaining.”…

YOU’RE TAKING THIS VERY WELL, ESME WEATHERWAX.

“It’s an inconvenience, true enough, and I don’t like it at all, but I know that you do it for everyone, Mister Death. Is there any other way?”

And, for the next five pages, Pratchett records the reactions of a host of other Discworld characters to the news of Granny’s death, ending with:

And far away, in some place unthinkable, a white horse was being unsaddled by a figure with a scythe with, it must be said, some sorrow.

It was a melancholy experience even for DEATH.

 

Saying goodbye

It was a melancholy experience for me to see so many of the Discworld characters pop up in The Shepherd’s Crown, knowing that they aren’t going to pop up again in a new Pratchett story: Lord Vetinari, Ponder Stibbons, the History Monks, Nanny Ogg, Mustrum Ridcully…

And to see new characters arise who aren’t going to be developed in a future volume, such as Godfrey Swivel and his goat Mephistopheles.

And to say goodbye to the Wee Free Men, the tiny, aggressive, red-haired, blue-bodied, heart-of-gold Nac Mac Feegles, and to Tiffany Aching.

Compared to Pratchett’s other great characters — Granny Weatherwax, DEATH, City Watch Commander Sam Vimes — Tiffany is more human.

She has the uncertainty of youth, doesn’t have the intense internal rage of Vimes nor the intensely tempered arrogance and skill of Granny, and, unlike DEATH, lives and breathes and feels and, generally, enjoys being alive.

So, goodbye, Tiffany.

 

My Third Thoughts

One last thought: I wonder about Tiffany’s last name, Aching.

She first appeared in the Discworld novel Wee Free Men in 2003. This was several years before Pratchett learned of his Alzheimer’s.

There is much about The Shepherd’s Crown that had me thinking about Pratchett facing his final end. I think he may have been so violent against the elves because this was his last chance to lash out at the stupidity of glamor and selfishness. I think his envisioning of Granny’s death was, in a way, his envisioning of his own.

But he gave Aching as a last name to Tiffany before he knew he’d have an early death.

It’s dangerous to read much into Pratchett’s names for characters, except when he wants you to. For instance, Nightshade, the Queen of the Elves, is named for a poisonous plant also known as belladonna.

However, what’s the meaning of Ankh-Morpork, the fictional city-state?  “Ankh” is an ancient Egyptian symbol for life. And Morpork? I’ve always thought that Pratchett was dining and wanted more pork when he decided it would work as the other half of the city’s name.  Well, why not?

Pretty fanciful, I know.

 

Tiffany’s last name

So, here’s my fanciful idea about Tiffany’s last name.

After reading Pratchett’s 41 Discworld books (as well as his other novels), I have the sense that his understanding of life was that aching is a part of breathing.

I ache, therefore, I am. Or something like that.

But that’s not all. Part of being alive is getting on with it. Yes, you have aches and pains. Yes, your heart’s been broken. Yes, you’re weighed down by worry and the hard knocks of existence.

Pratchett’s Discworld novels are nothing except a celebration of living despite hardship, of finding joy despite sorrow, of being open to other people despite their strangeness, to caring for other people despite the lack of guarantee of someone to care for you.

And a celebration of humor and wit and silliness and puns and satire and all of those things that make us laugh — and that make you laugh when you read a Pratchett novel.

Laughing amid the aching.

It’s fanciful, but I’m not sure I’m not correct here.

 

Patrick T. Reardon

2.2.26