Tiffany Aching is 13 in this novel and is working for/apprenticed to Miss Treason, a witch with an uncommon sense of the dramatic. Miss Treason takes Tiffany to witness the “Dark Morris,” a dance done to herald the “death” of Winter and the coming of Spring. However, at a crucial moment Tiffany interrupts and meets the Wintersmith, the personification of Winter, who mistakes her for his eternal love, The Summer Lady. What follows is Tiffany’s quest to stop the Wintersmith from stalking her and to bring on Summer, which has been delayed by her actions…
Wintersmith (2006) is the third novel in the Tiffany Aching books, a subset of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. While the first two books dealt with Tiffany getting older and beginning to navigate the world of adults, this one is the first that deals with Tiffany becoming romantically entangled with someone, despite not being sure she wants to be. Although it’s ostensibly a book for children, it illustrates the perils of being in a toxic relationship.
The Wintersmith is a force of nature. He has intelligence, knowledge, history and tradition locked away in his mind but he has no real idea about how to interact with people. He is summoned every Winter to die and be “replaced” by The Summer Lady (a ritual straight out of The Golden Bough) and lives entirely for that. When Tiffany takes him out of his regular rhythm of life and death he fixates upon her, recreating her image in snowflakes, ice and frost.
In a way he is perfectly harmless: he wants only to adore Tiffany and be loved by her. As most of us know, though, that way leads to darkness. In this case it’s a literal darkness as Winter won’t give way to Spring and Tiffany must learn that mistakes must be paid for. In fact, the novel begins with a glimpse into a possible future in which Tiffany and her family are struggling against a Winter that has gone far beyond its normal limits and threatens to overrun the world.
But there’s a lot of other stuff going on this novel, as well. Just as she did in A Hat Full Of Sky, Tiffany has to deal with other people and their weaknesses and foibles: in this case it’s Annagramma, one of her associates in witchcraft, who has to learn how to deal with getting a witching position before she’s properly ready for it. There’s also her relationship with Roland, the Baron’s son from The Wee Free Men, with whom she enjoys a friendship through letters and also endures the teasing of others who think that there is so much more going on between the two of them. And there’s the Nac Mac Feegle, the little blue men who plague her life with the best of intentions and who, wholly unnecessarily it turns out, set out to save her from the Wintersmith.
And there are the other witches: Miss Tick, who continues to act as Tiffany’s mentor, while Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are there to offer advice along the way.
(I love the Tiffany books but part of me resents the fact that Granny and Nanny play such a tiny part in them: however, both witches have done pretty much everything in their lives and it’s nice to see them passing on their wisdom to the younger generation.)
So, this book is really about Tiffany learning that she may be knowledgeable and adept in lots of areas of her life but that there are some things that she does need to work on. And that she shouldn’t be too harsh on people who don’t have skills or interests in the parts of life that she values.
She learns this because interrupting the dance was a mistake. Tiffany realises that the Wintersmith’s fixation her is dangerous and not just to her. In a lot of ways, as I hinted at above, this is a novel about stalking, with Tiffany at first being amused by the attention she is getting and then finding it spiralling very quickly into a dangerous obsession. And while Tiffany is able to vanquish her antagonist – an elemental force of nature isn’t really a villain, after all – she does become more aware of how people view her, something that will become even more explicit in the next book of this series. Also, I’m not really sure that I like the way she vanquishes him: while it does fit with the mythological feel of the story and the concept, I’m a little wary of a solution that involves giving the villain what they want – a kiss in this case – and having them being satisfied with it. But that’s just me imposing my own views and experience on a story that wants to be true to a concept mined from myth and legend.
On a lighter note, however, something that Wintersmith has that no other book in the Discworld series has is its very own concept album. Released in 2013, Wintersmith is a collection of songs by folk/rock band Steeleye Span. Terry Pratchett was a long-time fan of the band and welcomed the opportunity to collaborate with them on an album based on one of his books.
It’s an interesting beast: there are some lovely, lively tracks on there, but there are also a few songs that struggle a bit with the idea – “The Wee Free Men” is a fun, fast piece of music but it feels like it was written for a musical and it fails to understand that “Crivens!” is an exclamation rather a battlecry. However, “The Making Of A Man,” “The Dark Morris Song” and “The Summer Lady” are just superb, while “We Shall Wear Midnight” can have me bawling if I listen to it in the right mood (ie, any time I listen to it). There’s also a spoken word piece by Terry Pratchett himself in “The Good Witch.”
Unfortunately, Pratchett’s death in 2015 has mean that there are unlikely to be any more of these sorts of albums being released, but Wintersmith remains as an atmospheric accompaniment to the text and a lovely glimpse into what could have been, as opposed to the rather horrible glimpse at what could have been we got at the start of the novel.
At any rate, this latest adventure sees Tiffany starting to view herself as less of a child and more of a young woman. She is learning that sometimes we have to sacrifice what we want for a greater good and that mistakes must be paid for. And she learns the even more valuable lesson that we don’t necessarily have to be pleased or happy about it, either: her reaction to Annagramma becoming proficient in her position due to Tiffany’s own work shows that she has enough resilience to deal with disappointment. And this is a strength that shew will need in her next adventure…
Coming Up Next: Moist Von Lipwig has been put in charge of the Ankh-Morpork Mint. He’s got to navigate his way through the vindictive upper classes and look after a behest with a mind of its own and keep on Making Money.
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