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4.33 AVERAGE
4.33 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Terry Prachett: it seems unfair that so many people enjoy these books so thoroughly, and I condemned always to be on the outside looking in.
A fantastic send off from Terry Pratchett... There were parts of it (you'll know which parts when you read it) that are very much him saying fairwell to his world.
DON'T START THIS BOOK IN PUBLIC... YOU WILL SOB LIKE A SMALL CHILD
Best read with a good grounding in the rest of Discworld lore, it does stand up by itself, but best read after the others
DON'T START THIS BOOK IN PUBLIC... YOU WILL SOB LIKE A SMALL CHILD
Best read with a good grounding in the rest of Discworld lore, it does stand up by itself, but best read after the others
emotional
funny
inspiring
adventurous
medium-paced
A fitting end to one of the best literary journeys I've ever had the pleasure of embarking on.
This hurt to read. Not because The Shepherd’s Crown was bad at all. It wasn’t up to the standards of the very best Pratchett, both due to the illness that took and the fact this book hadn’t been completely finished when he passed, but it was still good and still had that Pratchett core of humor and human understanding to it. But because I was reading The Shepherd’s Crown with my years of loving the Discworld behind it, knowing this was the end. Thinking of all we had lost too soon, and all that could have been.
My only real comfort was that if it did have to end like this…it’s fitting to end at Tiffany Aching. Much of the recent Discworld has been about the changing of the world and the passing of the torch to the next generation, and if we had to go out on a note, it feels right to do it with Tiffany. That much, I think, Sir Terry would have been satisfied with.
A witch stands on the edge of all things. Good and evil, night and day, life and death. The witch of the Chalk, Tiffany Aching, knows that well. It is wisdom that will serve her well as her oldest enemy, the Elves, prepares to make one last stand against a world given more to iron of the land and iron of the mind.
Everything changes, and nothing is certain but for one thing. Tiffany has the Chalk in her bones, and the Chalk has Tiffany in itself, and no true witch lets anyone trample what is hers. The Elves have no idea what awaits them in…The Shepherd’s Crown.
To get the elephant in the room out of the way-yes, the writing in The Shepherd’s Crown is not Pratchett’s best. There’s evidence of the toll taken on his mind by the Alzheimer’s, and when he passed away the novel could have done with some polishing and revisions. But I do feel the heart of the Disc is still present in The Shepherd’s Crown, what drew us all to love Terry Pratchett’s writing for decades. There’s still the understanding and forgiveness of human frailty, and belief in human goodness and perseverance laced with on the point humor. While The Shepherd’s Crown won’t ever rank as the peak of the Disc, it’s a respectable wrap up to a series so beloved.
There’s something especially heartwarming about seeing how Tiffany Aching has grown so much from the eight year old we first met her as to a true ‘Hag o’ Hags’, the greatest witch of her generation. Tiffany so encapsulates the new kind of fantasy writers Pratchett saw rise up, inspired by his work and finding their own new ways to explore the genre, and you can just feel the love in his words.
The Shepherd’s Crown took some interesting choices in its plot and characters. So much of this book is about how the world has changed and is still changing, and we can either clamp our hands over our ears and try to ignore things or embrace the change and own it. There were some things I did see coming, and others I didn’t expect but enjoyed all the more for it.
As I said, this is not the peak of the Disc. But I laughed, I cried, and I got a little bit of closure I didn’t even know I needed as much as I did. Four stars, which is probably a little over generous on mere technical merits but I feel The Shepherd’s Crown on emotional impact alone.
GNU Terry Pratchett.
My only real comfort was that if it did have to end like this…it’s fitting to end at Tiffany Aching. Much of the recent Discworld has been about the changing of the world and the passing of the torch to the next generation, and if we had to go out on a note, it feels right to do it with Tiffany. That much, I think, Sir Terry would have been satisfied with.
A witch stands on the edge of all things. Good and evil, night and day, life and death. The witch of the Chalk, Tiffany Aching, knows that well. It is wisdom that will serve her well as her oldest enemy, the Elves, prepares to make one last stand against a world given more to iron of the land and iron of the mind.
Everything changes, and nothing is certain but for one thing. Tiffany has the Chalk in her bones, and the Chalk has Tiffany in itself, and no true witch lets anyone trample what is hers. The Elves have no idea what awaits them in…The Shepherd’s Crown.
To get the elephant in the room out of the way-yes, the writing in The Shepherd’s Crown is not Pratchett’s best. There’s evidence of the toll taken on his mind by the Alzheimer’s, and when he passed away the novel could have done with some polishing and revisions. But I do feel the heart of the Disc is still present in The Shepherd’s Crown, what drew us all to love Terry Pratchett’s writing for decades. There’s still the understanding and forgiveness of human frailty, and belief in human goodness and perseverance laced with on the point humor. While The Shepherd’s Crown won’t ever rank as the peak of the Disc, it’s a respectable wrap up to a series so beloved.
There’s something especially heartwarming about seeing how Tiffany Aching has grown so much from the eight year old we first met her as to a true ‘Hag o’ Hags’, the greatest witch of her generation. Tiffany so encapsulates the new kind of fantasy writers Pratchett saw rise up, inspired by his work and finding their own new ways to explore the genre, and you can just feel the love in his words.
The Shepherd’s Crown took some interesting choices in its plot and characters. So much of this book is about how the world has changed and is still changing, and we can either clamp our hands over our ears and try to ignore things or embrace the change and own it. There were some things I did see coming, and others I didn’t expect but enjoyed all the more for it.
As I said, this is not the peak of the Disc. But I laughed, I cried, and I got a little bit of closure I didn’t even know I needed as much as I did. Four stars, which is probably a little over generous on mere technical merits but I feel The Shepherd’s Crown on emotional impact alone.
GNU Terry Pratchett.
"In the Ramtop village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away—until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence."
A man is not dead while his name is still spoken. GNU Terry Pratchett.
A man is not dead while his name is still spoken. GNU Terry Pratchett.
The afterward clarifies that Terry Pratchett died before he could finish this book. To be honest, it shows. However, the bare bones are solid and it brought me to tears more than once in spite of it's lack of polishing. A worthy last book if you can keep that in mind.