The Great Discworld Retrospective No. 38: I Shall Wear Midnight

Tiffany Aching is working as the only witch in the Chalk (her homeland). Already exhausted from the duties that go with her immense patch, she discovers that there is a growing suspicion towards witches. She also learns that Roland, the son of the Baron whom she befriended all the way back in The Wee Free Men, is about to be married. Amidst all of this turmoil, she still has to deal with the death of the Baron and the rise of The Cunning Man, a malignant spirit who despises witches…

I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth Tiffany Aching book and probably the grimmest. It begins with child abuse and ends with a funeral, just to give you an idea of its thematic concerns. The child in question is Amber, a young girl who has made the mistake of telling her father she was pregnant while he was drunk. The resultant beating causes a miscarriage and turns Amber catatonic, so Tiffany entrusts her to the care of Jeannie, the Kelda of the Nac Mac Feegles, the small blue fairies (for want of a better word) that act as Tiffany’s occasional guardians, accomplices and hindrances. From there we also go through the death of the Baron; Tiffany being blamed for it; a trip to Ankh-Morpork; a near riot; the return of Eskarina Smith; the realisation that love can hurt; and the more welcome realisation that it can also heal.

Thematically this is probably the most serious of all the Discworld novels. I imagine that it may also have come from a fairly dark place within Sir Terry Pratchett’s soul. It was the second novel he had published since learning that he was suffering from Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a particularly malignant form of Alzheimer’s Disease. In terms of his writing, he had begun dictating his novels: Unseen Academicals, the Discworld book immediately prior to this one, was composed in such a manner. I Shall Wear Midnight is a better-constructed novel which suffers from very little of the bloat that I felt Academicals possessed, but it has some issues that I have long had with the Tiffany novels, despite loving them as well.

For one thing, the message is layered on just a little thickly for my taste. In other Discworlds, you might get a paragraph of authorial intervention where Sir Pterry would rant a bit about the concerns of that novel and the rest you can get from the actions and dialogue of the characters. Here it gets stated, restated, clarified and reaffirmed on several occasions so that you really get the idea. Although this firm portioning of the message does give us

“We do right, we don’t do nice”

Which is a fairly accurate summation of Granny Weatherwax’s philosophy of life if ever there was one.

For all that the ideas are troweled on, though, this volume probably has the most nuance of any of the Tiffany books. She very nearly gives in to the urge to be nasty to someone and she does take an active dislike to someone for a short time and she does nearly give in to her emotions before realising that it would only cause more hurt and complications than not giving in. Not that anyone gets away with anything, but it’s good to see Tiffany overcoming everyday challenges that we all face, as she has in each of the books, but really being able to solve them without resorting too much to her witchy side.

It’s also a superbly written book. Although this is a book for younger readers, Pratchett doesn’t seek to talk down to his readers, preferring to give them a wide range of information and opinions before letting us know what Tiffany decides to do. This is especially true in the case of Roland and his fiancée, Letitia. Upon learning that her old friend is to be married, Tiffany is initially confused: although she hasn’t really desired it, there has been an assumption that at some point she might marry Roland. The feelings of distrust that she has towards the new girl in Roland’s life are perfectly understandable, but Tiffany keeps on reminding herself that she shouldn’t ascribe any sort of malice or blame where none is intended. At first she dislikes Letitia, but she soon realises that she possesses no small talent at witchcraft herself – which becomes important for plot reasons – and succumbs to choosing wisely and becoming her friend instead. This is presented as a logical though hard-won choice and is in no way depicted as the easy way out or as a wimpy copout. Tiffany understands – as many other people her age might not – that somethings do not need to be fought about or worried at simply because they just aren’t important enough.

And, frankly, it’s a delight to see a “first love” story not become a successful relationship and marriage but deepen into friendship and respect, leaving space for a more suitable partner a little further down the line.

But something else that I adore about this book is the way that it effortlessly reintroduces a couple of characters from much earlier books to play a part in the telling of this tale. The first is Wee Mad Arthur of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. We first met him back in Feet Of Clay where he was recruited as a Watchman. In this book he is revealed to have been a Feegle all along, having been raised by gnomes after his parents died – a sort of a nod to the origin story of Captain Carrot.

The second is the aforementioned Eskarina Smith, from Equal Rites. It seems that she hasn’t been wasting her time since that book and has become an adept at a most unwitchlike sort of magic, as we expected she would have. However, we only get hints as to what her story has been since that much earlier book, with an indication that things might not have turned out as rosily for her as she might have hoped…

Having said that, though, it’s good to know that our old friends and acquaintances from much earlier books are still out there, doing their best for the world.

Finally, we have the villain of the piece: the Cunning Man. Formerly a Witchfinder who fell in love with a witch who managed to kill him when her own doom was sealed, he has become a vengeful spirit who wanders the land searching for hatred in order to continue his work.

I shan’t go into too much detail about how he is summoned or defeated but he represents a most mundane form of evil: the hatred of others. He finds some ready material on the Disc, and in ways that are depressingly familiar to those of us who live on the Roundworld.

His defeat, though, offers a hope similar to that in the books immediately prior to this: an indication that the Disc has become a slightly more tolerant place, one that might be just about ready to throw of the last shackles of prejudice and ignorance. It reflects the more banal nature of the threats and evil that face the protagonists of these novels. It doesn’t seem to take much to stop a magical threat, after all… but an evil composed of the worst aspects of people we know – that’s where the real horror comes from. And it’s a type of monstrous, hopeless horribly human horror that Sir Terry had been experimenting with since at least The Light Fantastic.

But as I said last time, it’s almost as though Sir Terry was preparing the Disc to be able to live its own life without needing the intervention of heroes… or rather, just needing heroes of a more practical nature. Or maybe not needing heroes at all, just regular people who can solve problems by applying some small amount of knowledge and wisdom.

Coming up next: Vimes goes on a holiday and uncovers a conspiracy and a secret right under the feet he should be putting up in Snuff.