Review: I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld, #38; Tiffany Aching, #4)

I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A Discworld book about the young witch Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mac Feegle. The story follows and calls back a lot to Wintersmith, so it might be useful for the reader to have read it recently, or at least look up a summary to remember what it was about. However, it's a much darker story than the usual, which is normally not at all for the Discworld series. It's still written in the usual Discworld style, funny and irreverent, with lots of puns and little jokes interwoven with the narration and dialogue. The Nac Mac Feegle are, as always, hilarious and a highlight. But the book has a pretty dark start, and the main theme ends up being about religious zealotry. It's also interwoven with many sub-plots and mini-stories about prejudice, ignorance, and violence. The book is about Tiffany Aching growing up (she was 13 in the last book, she is "almost 16" now); so it seems that the book themes are also "growing up".

The theme is not necessarily bad, but the books drags the story quite a bit. We only get to the main plot around 1/3 of the way in, and as we get towards the end, the main plot (the fight against the antagonist) feels almost secondary to all the other stuff going on. This is partially due to Pratchett's style of filling up his books with subplots and jokes; but it also feels like the main story is simply not that compelling.

In the end, it was a good Discworld story, but not a notable one.

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