★★★★☆ The Shepherd's Crown, by Terry Pratchett
** spoiler alert ** Sir Terry's valediction
The Shepherd’s Crown
Terry Pratchett
** spoiler alert **
Sir Terry’s valediction
The Shepherd’s Crown is the 41st and final novel in Terry Pratchett‘s Discworld series. It is, in fact, Pratchett‘s final novel. At 9 hours, 22 min in audio, it is a bit shorter than most of the preceding Discworld novels (by comparison, the preceding novel, Raising Steam. is 13 hours 57 min). To me The Shepherd’s Crown feels a little incomplete, a little less polished than the typical Discworld novel. And it probably was. In an Afterword, Rob Wilkins writes
Once [a novel] was shaped, [Terry] would keep writing it too, adding to it, fixing bits, constantly polishing and adding linking sequences, tossing in just one more footnote or event. His publishers often had to prise the manuscript away from him, as there was always more he felt he could do, even though by then he would be well into the next story which was tugging at his elbow.
...
The Shepherd’s Crown has a beginning, a middle and an end, and all the bits in between. Terry wrote all of those. But even so, it was, still, not quite as finished as he would have liked when he died.
The Shepherd’s Crown is dedicated to Esmerelda Weatherwax, which is peculiar, since Granny Weatherwax is not (as far as I know) a real person. She is one of the central characters of the Discworld, having been introduced in novel 3, Equal Rites. She is a witch. More, she is THE witch -- the hag o’ hags, the witch whom all the witches of the Discworld acknowledge as the most prominent, and whom non-witches treat as the one person who can speak for witches. She is a formidable witch, commanding respect (not to mention fear) for her abilities. It is unusual to dedicate a book to a fictional character, but I suppose by the time he began to write The Shepherd’s Crown Granny was as real to Pratchett as any earthly person and more real than most.
The Shepherd’s Crown begins with Granny’s death. (I marked this review a spoiler so that I could say that.) She is still an active witch when she dies, so her death has repercussions. First is the matter of choosing a successor. The Shepherd’s Crown is the final novel of the Tiffany Aching subseries, so Granny’s successor will not come as a surprise. Indeed, in the previous Tiffany Aching novels, it was obvious that Granny was grooming Tiffany as her successor.
A more important problem is that Granny, by the strength of her abilities, has been holding in check certain forces that wish humans evil. Upon Granny’s death, those checks are weakened and the evil is unleashed. The central plot of The Shepherd’s Crown is the fight to contain it.
Pratchett died of a form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease, which he called An Embuggerance. The Embuggerance had effects on the later Discworld novels -- in my opinion, #39 Snuff and #40 Raising Steam are inferior to most of the Discworld. The Shepherd’s Crown is different. It is evident that the prospect of his own death concentrated Pratchett‘s mind wonderfully, and gave him the topic and the plot for this final novel. It is not, in my opinion, the best Discworld novel, but it is definitely in the top tier.
I love Tiffany. And feegles.