With the release of each new Terry Pratchett novel, I start prattling on about how remarkable it is that he’s still cranking them out, what with his Early Onset Alzheimers and all. Yet since Sir Terry first publicly announced that he had the disease back in 2007 (with its source going back to a minor stroke which he suffered around 2004-2005), he’s written and published many books, including Unseen Academicals and Nation, and at the time of writing this post, about to release another called Snuff.
This review though, is about I Shall Wear Midnight. It’s going back a bit now – it was released last year. I’ve been tardy with my reviews and it’s been several weeks since I finished reading this, but also because I waited until this was out in paperback before picking it up, so that it would match the previous 3 books in the Tiffany Aching series which I already own (an aside: despite tracking down a copy from the exact same imprint, Corgi, it still turned out to be a different size and shape to the others… geek rage!)
As for the contents of the book, I found it to be enjoyable, but probably less so than the previous ones. Jokes stemming from the antics of the Wee Free Men are starting to wear thin, and because Tiffany is grown up now (in body but much more in mind), some of her charm has worn off.
This series was always aimed more at children, but in Midnight‘s case Pratchett seems to have been bogged down by this limitation, and the result has lost the freshness of the earlier books, and also lacks the wit and sophistication of the “core” Discworld novels.
Unless you’re a perfectionist or die-hard Pratchett fan, you can probably safely give this one a miss.