The Wee Free Men

Written by Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men is the first novel in the ‘Tiffany Aching’ series and but one book in the grander Discworld series, which depicts this carefully crafted universe and history of a world not dissimilar to our own except that it is a disc carried on the backs of four elephants astride a giant turtle, floating through space; a world where there are witches, wizards, monsters, thieves, dreams, and everything you can and can’t think of. 

One day, whilst babysitting her brother, Tiffany Aching notices a monster lurking in the river. Then she discovers hundreds of tiny blue men stealing her sheep. To help answer her questions, she seeks the knowledge from a witch but soon after her visit, her baby brother goes missing. It becomes apparent to Tiffany that something magical is happening on the Wold and the task falls to her to stop it progressing any further. Along with the help of the tiny blue Wee Free Men, Tiffany takes up her Granny Aching’s book on sheep and steps into another world to save her brother and her land. 

Being the first novel in a series, The Wee Free Men is just as much of an introduction story as Lemony Snicket’s The Bad Beginning or J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and just as easy to read (well it is a children’s book after all). We enter into a world that we can identify with on a number of levels: 1) the ‘real’ world is very similar to our own, and 2) we recognise classic tropes and characters from the fantasy genre. Whilst there are things about this story that are classic as well as fresh and original, the brilliant thing about Pratchett’s writing is how he writes with a voice like that of a commentator. There’s a sophistication and wit in the voice that one reads this book with, which you would think would leech some of the magic out of the tale, but in fact it makes it all the more engaging. 

Pratchett writes with a direct and clear approach when it comes both to describing the world, its characters and their actions, as well as their dialogue. One thing that particularly struck me was the way that he wrote the dialogue of the Wee Free Men in accent! A strong Scottish accent comes through the dialogue of these little blue kilted blighters as their dialogue is written phonetically and it provides the story not just with character depth and complexity, but with a little bit of humour and it makes them very endearing and attractive: you know how fascinated we beocme when we hear other people’s accents? Well this excitement and fascination continues right through this book every time there’s some Wee Free Men dialogue to read. 

Now whilst the majority of my response to this book was positive, I won’t deny there were some negatives too, but this is more about me as a reader (you may read this and disagree with my thoughts; that’s fine, that’s great, that’s reading). There is a lot of jumping about from present to past in the form of flashbacks and whilst they are easy to differentiate, (the flashbacks being written in italics) I sometimes felt that they happened in a bit of a clumsy manner. I found this same clumsiness during certain bouts of the story where Pratchett is writing Tiffany’s own thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts and whatnot. I will admit that I did get used to the style and this is a children’s book so flawless, seamless prose and narrative are not be wholeheartedly expected, but it was just something that was stagnant to me for a while and I felt that I should bring it up. 

Filled with action, adventure, witches, magic, dreams, drama, and comedy, The Wee Free Men is a classic fantasy quest narrative that works particularly well as a children’s book in that its central heroine is a child, there is the hero’s journey and return home, and it’s written in a way that makes it accessible to both readerships (children and adults). It’s a fun one without any doubt, easy to read, and quite easy to lose yourself in. Very enjoyable.