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Equal or superior to Harry Potter!! May 14, 2003 (65 of 66 found this helpful)
If you're already a Terry Pratchett fan (I certainly am), you don't need a reviewer to tell you that you'll like this book. I'd like to address this review to the many many readers who are looking for something really GREAT for younger readers.
Tiffany, a 9-year-old witch must save the world with the assistance of a herd of drunken angry red-headed six-inch-tall kilt-wearing Scottish fairies, who bear names like "Slightly Bigger Than Wee Jock But Not So Big as Middle-Sized Jock Jock" and "Rob Anybody."
The book is hysterically, laugh-out-loud funny for both younger and adult readers (my family looked at me funny as I was giggling the whole time I was reading it.) Although a girl is the hero, the rambunctious troublemaking Feegles will make the book highly appealing for boys (of all ages) as well.
It's actually serious in intent, though, with themes reminiscent of A Wrinkle in Time or The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe series (the villain is a Queen who distorts people's consciousnesses and leaves a trail of frozen weather everywhere she goes). Tiffany saves the world through strength of character and common sense (and hooray for those!) rather than with magic alone.
As much as we liked Harry Potter around our house, I think that Wee Free Men is the equal of any of the Potter books. The best "kid" fiction of the year (or longer).
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Crivens! A Very Good Book May 14, 2003 (50 of 52 found this helpful)
Terry Pratchett won a Carnegie Medal for his first children's book set in his Discworld, "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents." He has a good shot at a second award for "Wee Free Men." It's that good.
Nine year old Tiffany Aching was born on The Chalk. The Achings have lived on The Chalk and tended their sheep for centuries. Tiffany's grandmother was the matriarch of the Aching clan, and while she never called herself a witch, she never denied it, either. Tiffany is still trying to adjust to the death of her grandmother, and to the birth of her sticky little brother, Wentworth, when she is attacked by a monster out of Faerie. One thing leads to another, and before long she must rescue her brother from Faerie, be the kelda of the Nac Mac Feegle, the Wee Free Men of the title, and save the world from the terrors of Faerie. Because there is no one else.
One of Pratchett's many skills is inversion. In "Amazing Maurice," he inverted the Pied Piper of Hamlin. In "Wee Free Men," he inverts children's fairy tales in general. Instead of a magic sword, Tiffany has a plain old iron frying pan. Instead of a wise mentor, she has a toad who used to be a lawyer. Instead of an army, she has the Nac Mac Feegle. The Queen of Faerie, Tiffany's antagonist, is about as far from a noble Tolkien elf as you can get. Because the Queen of Faery has the power to steal your dreams, your worst nightmares, and trap you inside them.
And Tiffany must confront the Queen on her own ground, in the land of nightmares, where the monsters are terrifying and real. You don't have to reflect very long to understand Pratchett is working at several levels. The themes are meaningful and accessible to children without the slightest condescension.
Some of the characters - the Queen herself, the Nac Mac Feegle, and wonderful cameos at the end of the story - are familiar from other stories. But as was the case with "Amazing Maurice," you don't have to know the other Pratchett stories to relish "Wee Free Men." This is masterful story-telling, hysterically funny and very scary by turn. Pratchett is very, very good, and this story is one of his best. Highly recommended to both children and adults.
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The Terrror of Having Your Dreams Come True... May 4, 2003 (18 of 20 found this helpful)
"The Wee Free Men" is Terry Pratchett's second foray into Discworld-for-Young-Adults coming a year and a half after "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents" and six months after his last 'regular' Discworld book, "Night Watch". It revisits ground from "Lords and Ladies" and "Carpe Jugulum", which is fine, because with usual Pratchett flair, he tosses in enough wry satire, strange humor and generally good storytelling that you don't always notice when he goes back to some of his older material.
While the Nac Mac Feegle (the Wee Free Men last seen in "Carpe Jugulum"), little woad-tattooed Pictsies, do feature in a large chunk of the book, the heroine is Tiffany, a nine-year-old witch's granddaughter and budding witch herself who must be the singularly most sensible (but still likeable) character I've ever read in a book directed at an audience less than 18 years old. She struggles to cope with the death of a grandmother who, even though she died more than a year ago, has still had a huge impact on her life. She also struggles with making sense of the world - both as a young girl and as a human being, and she struggles with the Queen of the Elves/Fairies (last seen in "Lords and Ladies") in what becomes a metaphor for maturity and clarity in a large, scary world. Pratchett's moral is that just because you're not yet officially an adult, it doesn't mean that you can't understand the world any less well. This is a theme he's played with before, but it's always appropriate no matter how many times he brings it out.
As a huge Discworld fan, I really enjoyed this book - possibly even more than "The Amazing Maurice...", although it's probably not at quite the same level of literary excellence as his previous work. Fans of Pratchett in general will undoubtedly appreciate his jabs at academia, fairy tales and the Harry Potter series (which future books about Tiffany may someday parody more explicitly). For fans of Discworld, not only are Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegle two of his more interesting creations (which is saying something), but the cameo by Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg at the end is delightful. Missing, though, is the obligatory cameo by Death - possibly for the first time ever in a Discworld book.
Anyway, I recommend this book to anyone regardless of age or knowledge of Discworld. As with "The Amazing Maurice..." the Discworld cosmology is relatively light, so if you're not familiar with the Disc, it won't get in the way of enjoying the book. If you are, though, his subtle touches and revisitations throughout the book make it a more integrated work than his last foray into Discworld-Young-Adult. Either way, though, it's a great book.
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Multi-layered fairy story. Good stuff. Jun 18, 2003 (11 of 11 found this helpful)
The Wee Free Men are scared--the lines between the world are getting thin and the Queen that they once served is ready to break through. Only a witch can help--but the only witch available is nine-year-old Tiffany. Tiffany Aching doesn't know magic and she doesn't have a pointed hat, but she's decided she will be a witch some day. With the arrival of the Queen and the kidnapping of Tiffany's brother, some day arrives more quickly than Tiffany had anticipated.
Tiffany sets off on an adventure in a dream world--a world where your dreams can hurt you, and where other being's dreams can hurt you even more. The Queen is the mistress of dreams--and nightmares. In her kingdom, and increasingly in the mundane world that Tiffany comes from, nightmare monsters are loose. Even the wee free men cannot stand against them.
Author Terry Pratchett starts with a simple fairy tale--the poor shepherd girl facing the evil Queen, and dresses it with multiple layers of meaning. At the simplest level, WEE FREE MEN is an adventure that twists many of the established rules of the fairy tale (the witches are the goodguys, the beautiful Queen is evil, and the baron's son is purely incompetent). Dig deeper and every detail had weight. The Wee Men are funny with their Scottish accents and willingness to fight, but they are also a bit sad and more especially, a good example for all of us. Like us, they've been fooled before. Unlike most of us, they are willing to fight to prevent it from happening again.
Tiffany, armed with her frying pan and with instructions to open her eyes, then open them again, is unusually clever for a nine-year-old, but then she is the hero. With the example of her grandmother behind her, there is little that Tiffany cannot do if she can keep her mind on it--and keep from being swept up in other people's dreams.
I might be making WEE GREEN MEN sound like some sort of philosophy text and nothing could be farther from the truth. It's filled with Pratchett humor and insights, an exciting adventure, and emotional complexities. One small word of warning--although the Nac Mac Feegle (the wee men) appear in Discworld stories, Tiffany's world resembles our own a lot more than it does the Discworld of Ankh Morpork and the Great God Om.
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Abso-cussin'-marvellous! May 10, 2003 (11 of 11 found this helpful)
There's Terry Pratchett. And then there's... well, basically, a whole load of other people. But few of these other people can tie you to a story like Terry can.
There's Tiffany. And then, well... There's her annoying little brother. Who only wants sweets and to go a-toylut.
Of course there's education. If it wasn't there, children would have too much time to play and playing wouldn't be fun anymore. There's also Education. About how life really works (when other people think that things are just as they are, or make perfect sense, it's always interesting to actually take a look...).
And then there's Terry on Education with a story of Tiffany and how witchcraft is about what things are really about. About the sound of silence, the comfort of an informed granny and the feel of a snowflake on your pointy nose.
There is, well, nothing like it.