Hello, everyone,
I have read it through yesterday during the whole day (yesterday was a kind of holy day here in Germany, so I had lots of time). I finished it around 1:30 local time in the night.
Apart from it being a very, very, very good book (as usual), my main criticism is twofold :
- Too dark in general, especially at the beginning
- Tiffany aching seems to have grown an unpleasant tendency towards becoming a "Mary Sue". At the end of the book, she is so powerful she could easily surpass Granny Weatherwax when she becomes older
There are few minor points in general, thing I've noticed, but aren't really "right" or "wrong", just that I - peronally, that is - found them a bit annoying :
- Okay, this is a book about a girl becoming a with. A series of 4 books now, to be exact. But - how about bos ? They usually look rather incompetent in the books - if they are written about at all. Preston is the only positive example I can think of. It's basically a "women's world".
- This leads me to my next point : The book portraits the witches as very powerful problem-solving entities, so to say. What about wizards ? They aren't usually portraied as "problem-siolving", rather than "chaos-evoking" individuals (with a stzrong tendency towards everything that smells like food) [sorry f this sounds weird, but I have a real-life tendency to adapt the style of authors if I've read their books for too long, must have something to do with being an HSP, I guess].
- And this leads me to the next point : Wh isn't there a male equivalent to Eskarina ? A man who does witching ... This could be interesting ... And when I thought of it, the thought popped into my mind that "he would be a shaman, then. Because what shamans do is nothing but witching, only that it's the male side".
- And my very last point : The book is about ... well, pride, too. In a way. The pride of the witches, in this case, to be exact.
This ghas led me to the thought of "what about people with inferiority complexes ?" - It's because I'm suffering such feelings on one side - my "intellectual side", so to say, but not at all when I'm doing something manually, like repairing bikes or cooking, for example. Now, what I mean is, to show the world from the perspective of a prson who has deep inferiority complexes and perhaps even depressions. The world looks different, then. - And I think - since this series is about a girl growing up and learning about the "adlt world" - this theme coul be there, too. Because mental illnesses
like that aren't that easy to spot ... And much harder to heal ...
- Ahem, this wasn't *really* my last point, because my last point is something that developed in my memory just this morning : In my stories I often write about the theme of healing. It's my favourite theme.
This morning, in my head there evolved a scene of the Cunning Man - becoming "healed" - in one way or another.
And my scene goes like this (it's a mere fragment right now) :
The Cunning Man is standing on one side.
The witch (not Tiffan Aching in this case) is standing on the other side.
Next to her is a priest of the original church the former Cunning Man belonged to.
And th priest says to the Cunning Man : "we don't do that anymore. [Killing witches and such.]"
The Cunning Man does not know what to do, because all he once believed iis shattered - in one second. He realizes that al he has done so far was wrong.
And then - he cries. He breaks down to his knees and cries. And becaue he cries, his eyes return.
And THEN - he can be
healed. - And return to the land of the dead, where he belongs to (but refused to go to, without his wife).
And his wife - is the witch. Who - this is a possibility, not the scene as it is in my head - dies together with him at this momen.
And finally - this couple is reunited and they both return to the land of the dead, the Ultimate Healing in this case (in my opinion).
And in the background there are one or two other witches. Who go back to where they had come from, in company with the priest.
One of them could be Tiffany Aching. As a kind of spectator, not being allowed to interfere here.
This is the scene as it evolved in my head (with the last details as I riote it down here - that's the way I always do it when I write my own short stories).
And that's the end, then.
Alrik
P.S. : Thanks for this forum ! I'll be going to look around here more often in the future !
