The "I shall wear midnight" thread

[InVinoVeritas]

Yeah, yeah.

I agree that the covers are similar (talking about the Harry Potter and the Tiffany Aching's cover), but they are also sort of a "stand up and get ready for an adventure" position. the kind that is almost obligation on a comic-book. Seriously, the editors sue the artists that don't make this "looking good and menacing" poses.

I like Kirby's work because they´re clearly made as illustrations for the stories. That means the artist clearly read the books, and thought about composition and the characteres before drawing them. Heck, he even posted illustrations in his website when he felt the editors butchered his work.

Thank you for posting the image, btw. I was looking for it in a good size, to have a good look. I really enjoy Paul's work.

Now... I see Tiffany Aching as a senior witch and the version we know, in the blue dress. The facial structure is amazingly painted, and we can see it's the same person even if we do not look at the staff in the hands of the older witch or the silver horse holding her cape. So I assume sometime in this book Tiffany's going to meet her older self. That probabily inspired the title, also.

I was at first outraged thinking the old witch might be Tiffany's grandma. But Paul wouldn't do that to Grandma Aching. Then I remember he already made a depiction of the charactere before, and got calmer. Good thing I didn't find enough stamps for the bomb's weight. Then I looked closely and saw the silver horse. Uff.

I've been reading the thread for some time, but only recently developed opinions.

I got me a vacation time to read and reread many of Pratchett's books. And got to some conclusions. First, I think he's getting even better at it. It's a natural development of the author as an author, and it's suppposed to happen. But I also think Pratchett likes to insert more magic than it's due in some stories. Not a criticism, just an opinion. Ok, there's not really much difference, so it's a criticism. But a respectful one, I suppose.

Take "Men at Arms" (with the Gonne being a sentient being - which I chose to interpret as a metaphor), "Unseen Academicals" (the game is a sort of magic related to praying), Going Postal (the unsent cards are magic), "The Color of Magic" (not only the books, but also the invasion of the Dungeon Dimentions) and even "Reaper Men" (with the invasion of the Shopping Center). Is this a bad thing? Well... let's say it is Pratchett's way of delivering a story, but it is my feeling that not every tale really needs a different menacing magical mistery. Some would work pretty nicely without the magic. And it gets pretty repetitive after a while.

Not the case in Hogfather, Maskerade and in other cases where looking philosophically at things leads us to discover metaphorical magic in some things we usually take for granted. But I've felt the "now, why is that magical creature attacking the characteres in this perfectly shaped story?" feeling more than once. And am starting to get the "Now, what is the next cosmic magical enemy this time?" feeling...

Any comments on that?

 

[Tonyblack]

Welcome to the site, InVinoVeritas!

I think the older witch has a hare-shaped brooch and witness the large hare in the picture. I'm guessing it's not an older Tiffany - but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Terry's books have indeed got better the more he has written. Sadly I don't think that's always the case with authors. Many of them have a great fist couple of books and then run out of ideas.

 

[Doughnut Jimmy]

Hi InVinoVeritas

Personally I don't have a problem with the role of magic in Terry's books. I would say it's mostly used within constraints that prevent it from becoming a solve-all for the stories and I enjoy the fact that having the magical/unreal option gives him space to play with ideas.

There's 2 versions to why I think this works - the slightly deeper version is that using magic in for example the gonne allows a book that makes you think about the attraction and addiction of the power a gun gives you to be an easy read rather than a very heavy tome. The other version is Pratchett likes writing about magic and I like reading about it, that's one of the reasons I read fantasy in the first place

Enjoy the site

 

[Tonyblack]

Terry also likens magic to nuclear power with positive uses if used sparingly and safely, but disasterous ones if not.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Hmmm... maybe. I dunno if its a hare or not. I just deducted it would be Tiffany because she also has a shepparding staff, which suggests she's a witch from the Chalk. And we know how rare those are.

But I'd like to present another hypothesis: how about Eskarina Smith? I'd say she's way too old in the image, but is the only other witch that I remember having a staff of any sort. Besides, it was rumored somewhere that Eska would be in that book, since she practically disappeared from Pratchett's books. I liked her, and missed her whenever I read about UU.

Would be nice.

 

[Dotsie]

Hi IVV I definitely think Terry's books are better now that he's stopped with the satire on fantasy novels, and more into satire on roundworld. With that has come less magic in the stories. But you have to have a little, right?

And I agree with Tony that it's a hare (although the discussions about whether the horse looks like a horse have been lengthy, and some say pointless )

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

Just a 'teensy' historical comment on the Horse from an art perspective. It's not supposed to look like a horse. The real horse at Uffington disputably dates back to the Bronze Age or more popularly to 871 CE which places it in the timeline of King Alfred and a major victory over the Danes.

The style of the chalk cutting almost definitely belongs to the earlier era and so possibly even pre-Celtic, although it's consistent with the early Celtic (Swiss) migration style rather than the French Celtic which is later and generated by the spread of the Roman Empire so most definitely Iron Age. Most of the art from the Celt and of the time of the Bronze Age up to the Danelaw period was zoomorphic abstraction. It featured heavily stylised (similar to the Uffington cutting) representations of animals, especially of horses, dogs. serpents and hares with the Celts (think Book of Kells or the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Saxons and Danes also had the same approach in their art on jewellery etc), along with more abstract symbology such as spirals and knotwork.

This wasn't because the artists were very bad at drawing for the knotwork designs in particular are intricate and geometrical in the extreme. One suggestion has been that they had a taboo on making their creations 'perfect' for fear of offending the gods, which might have some credence but that's a later idea supported by the spread of the early Church in western Europe. My own view is that they were purposefully abstract and symbolic in some way and connected to the half world between the living and the spirits.

Like they're saying in the book - it's the idea of the grace and power of the horse. In Uffington I think the lines also reflect the contours of the hill and this is highly consonant with the nomad/herdsman culture in being very naturalistic and understanding of place as well as the form they made - sound a little like Tiffany's Granny philosophy just a little?

 

[Dotsie]

Quite a lot of speculation there (which is fine by me ), but isn't it the case that we don't actually know what it's supposed to look like? A horse is our best guess. And while you may be correct about the "not wanting to be perfect" thing, why is the knot work so intricate and the horse not? Maybe it's because they were cutting it on a hill, where not all the horse was visible at once, so they went for something simple?

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

Well Tiffany's horse is without a doubt based on the Uffington one and although the dating on that is uncertain and wildly conflicting, the art history side of it is sound theoretically (I've done a ton of research for dissertations on Celtic and contemporary post-Roman 'barbarian' cultures). The 'not perfect' idea comes out of the research and supported by the nature of early Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures as does the Christian take on it with the rejection of classical art forms in Rome and Byzantium

Turf-cutting even a smaller size design on a hillside is bloody hard work - the White Horse (and the Longman on tghe South Downs and the Cerne Abbas giant) were made that way on purpose.

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

Sorry - knotwork... It's not really found in nature so less offence arises

In fact even with that there's almost always a deliberate flaw built into those type of designs. It's known that at the height of that artistic trend (in the monasteries) they used instruments like compasses to create symmetry. There's various theories on how knotwork started of which I favour an inspiration from nature from things like tree branches in a wood appearing to weave together or wind patterns on the water. The whole point of their art was to make something representative of a horse or a hare, just not a faithful one

 

[raisindot]

The cover's bordering on rascist!

And almost pedophiliac. Look where the Feegle are standing! It almost looks like they're trying to market it like the Twilight series.

I DESPISE U.S. COVERS!

Would anyone here be willing to take a Paypal payment for a UK version and shipping and ship it to me?

J-I-B

 

[Tonyblack]

Have you thought of ordering from Amazon Canada, Jeff? They do the UK covers. The trouble is, it's not available until the end of October.

 

[raisindot]

Thanks for the tip, Tony. Never would have thought of Amazon.ca.

Of course that creates a dilemma--I've reserved the book at my local library and, assuming it's available in September, I'm more likely to get it there before the end of October, whereas if I get it from the amazon.uk, it'll probably arrive faster. Guess I'll have to once again get on the "read now, buy later" plan.



J-I-B

 

[InVinoVeritas]

"

From what I've seen, the american covers for Tiffany's books are of the genre "take a suspiciously cut photo of a teenager and shove a even more suspicious 3D plastic effect hurriedly made and shove it into the shelves".

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

Confirmation on the brooch front - it's definitely a hare. Seen it on max zoom on the Amazon link and it's also definitely NOT the horse, abstracted or literal .

 

[InVinoVeritas]

A different Witch, then. Oh, well, Pratchett's characteres tend to be so nicely presented that it's always a pleasure to meet a new one.

The silver horse is for sale, by the way. Paul Kidby, I tink, has created the pendant. So, if there's any doubt about what the pensant should look like for Terry Pratchett, I believe it's solved.

And It's a lovely pendant, too.

Of course, it will take forever to get in Brazil, since there are only 14 books by Pratchett (icluding Good Omens) published here. Shameful. And they are very hard to find, too.

Other authors I like to read haven't even been published here, as Robert Anton Wilson, Jonathan Carroll, Robert Heinlein and Robert Frost. You can deduct two thigs from that:
1: I have to dowload a lot of books (can't afford importing them at my expense)
2: somewhere in my mind the word "Robert" must be deeply associated with the act of writing. Dunno why.

By the way, I don't know if that happens to everyone, but my perception of the characteres has shifted a lot with Pratchett's conduction of the Discworld universe: at first I enjoyed Rincewind a lot, then my favorite character became Granny Weatherwax. And now I'm having an internal fight among the Feegles and the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, which is becoming one of the most multifaceted characteres in Pratchett's books, I think. The Feegles I like because they're hillarious. But the Patrician has so many sides to him that one can hardly wait to see what Pratchett's going to do with him next. That one would be me.

 

[NeoNico]

Of course, it will take forever to get in Brazil, since there are only 14 books by Pratchett (icluding Good Omens) published here. Shameful. And they are very hard to find, too.

That's a shame We're kinda lucky in the UK, since we usually get the first DW release dates :/ I think Australia and the commonwealth gets the same dates though, so that's good As it is, 5 days to release over here :3

That American cover art makes me feel ill, I seriously thought it was a bad joke at first...it looks like an 11 year old photoshopped it D: Have all the American covers of the Tiffany books been this bad?

 

[MattK]

That American cover art makes me feel ill, I seriously thought it was a bad joke at first...it looks like an 11 year old photoshopped it D: Have all the American covers of the Tiffany books been this bad?

Yup. I'm sad to say that's the cover I have for Wintersmith.

 

[DaveC]

Don't know if any reviews have popped up yet, or if this has been posted already but here is a link to British Sci-Fi Magazine SFX's I Shall Wear Midnight review

http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/08/27/book-review-i-shall-wear-midnight-terry-pratchett/

I have only skimmed the review to see if it was favourable or not (guess ), because I haven't got to the Tiffany books yet.

DaveC's Discworld Chronological Odyssey Status Report: I am 30 pages from the end of Thief of Time currently and will be either moving onto Science of Discworld II or The Last Hero next.

 

[Tonyblack]

Thanks Dave!