Welcome readers dear to a book by a long time favourite author of mine, Terry Pratchett. Terry Pratchett returns to the world of the discworld, for the 4th book featuring Tiffany Aching, the young witch of the chalk. For those of you unaware, the discworld is flat and round, like a well, disc, supported on the back of four elephants, whom in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle which is swimming through space.

Got your head around that folks? Good, here we go.

While the book is readable alone, I think you will enjoy it more if you read the prior novels featuring the main protagonist, which in order are Wee Free Men, Hat Full Of Sky and Wintersmith.

These books are actually aimed at the Young Adult Market, but Pratchett doesn’t dumb down or soften his themes for which I give him a massive amount of respect.

In a lot of ways, this is very much a coming of age story for our main protagonist, a lot of the story threads from previous books get tied together rather neatly, making a clean start for the next story, where ever that may be.

The author has a large following of diehard readers that will read just about anything he writes, the advantage with this is, as he’s already written more then 30 books set in the same world, the setting is firmly established and doesn’t need a lot to set it up or put it into motion.

The pacing of the book is enchanting, you quickly find yourself going through it, possibly in one sitting and the entertainment value remains for a second reading. Nothing feels hurried or forced, it’s very organic in the manner it flows from one scene to the next, yet you become so entrenched in the story that you happily keep reading.

The characters are well formed and for the most part likeable, unless the intention of course isn’t for them to be liked . Sometimes the characters can feel a little flat or 2 dimensional, I’d like to believe that this was intentional as most of the flatter characters were throw away characters, good for only a brief moment or two.

As usual, the stars of the show are the feegles, little blue men, that not only steal the show, but anything else that isn’t nailed down. As these exaggerated stereotypes of the scotish run rampant through the pages of the book, they really do show why people have become so attached to the wee free men.

I’m going to give this book a solid 8 out of 10, this isn’t really a comment on the quality of the book against other books, more of a comment on the quality of the book against his other works, while it was good, it’s not my favourite and it didn’t grab me quite like others in the loose series have.

Final thoughts, it’s a great book for a few wintery afternoons and evenings, well worth the cover price.

Go forth and read!