Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #35)

Wintersmith, the 35^th installment in Discworld, continues the unusual journey of Tiffany Aching to becoming a fully fledged witch. This book, marketed as an Young Adult novel, is different to the other Discworld books. It is about romance, growing up, and has many themes familiar to the readers of the YA genre.

Synopsis:

It is winter time! Snowflakes are falling on the land and fishermen are sighting giant icebergs. Surely, these are signs announcing the winter's arrival. But hang on, there is something odd about the appearances of those snowflakes and icebergs, it is almost as if they look... human? Hmm, either I am going bonkers or my eyes are deceiving me because I swear that I am seeing Tiffany Aching's face in the snow flakes! What on Disc is going on?

Tifanny's face in the snow flakes? Mate, that sounds like trouble! How did we get here?

Well, it all started when Tiffany Aching, now apprenticed to Miss Treason (a really scary old witch), danced with Wintersmith and got his attention.

Crivens! So are you telling me that all of this is because the Winter fell for Tiffany? What are we going to do? We are all going to freeze to death!

No idea if there is anything we can do. But who knew, that love can make the world so cold?

My thoughts about this book:

The Tiffany Aching books are oriented towards young readers, but The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky both felt "adult" because they were deeply seated in philosophical themes. Wintersmith, however, feels more "YA" than its two predecessors because it has themes, such as teenage romance and growing up, which are more common in the YA genre.

I am not much of a YA reader because I think teenage romance and growing up are overused themes in the genre. Initially, Wintersmith didn't connect with me as much as the two books preceding it. This is not to say that Wintersmith is a bad book, I thoroughly enjoyed this book for its humor, atmosphere, and the intriguing story. The story has a good moral lesson about responsibility and owning one's mistakes, and it explored these themes in meaningful and powerful way. But after I put down the book, my initial feeling was that Wintersmith was just a tad too "YA" for me.

However, as I was sitting down and writing a review for the book, I discovered that I missed an important theme in this novel, and as this realization dawned on me, I had a new found appreciation for Wintersmith. What is the theme that I missed? It has to do with the story's antagonist, Wintersmith. Let me explain:

A lot of our (Western) medieval and modern stories/fables are influenced by the myths of the ancient near east (such as the Sumerian texts, which in turn influenced the opening chapters of the Bible). There are a lot to be discussed on this topic, but it suffices to say, in these myths and fables we see the archetype (in the Jungian sense) of good versus evil, where good is synonymous to order and evil is synonymous to chaos. In this archetype, the world is black and white, and people are black and white too, and our existence, according to this archetype, depends on the victory of order against chaos, and the heroes are those who have picked the "right' side to fight on.

While this artchetype has it usefulness at uniting a tribe of people against another, in an environment where resources are scarce, but it could also lead to tribalism and wars – it festered the thinking that I don't need to put myself in your shoes because you are siding with evil and I am siding with good. Today, we are still seeing the tragic consequences of this "order versus chaos, good versus evil" archetype, just look at the wars in the Middle East!

But not every ancient myth has this archetype. The Nordic and ancient Chinese stories, noteably, told stories about the cyclic nature of the world, and of our human condition and life therein. Make no mistake, there are protagonists and antagonists in these stories, but it is worth noting they are not clear cut into good and evil. Instead, in these stories we see our own reflections in the characters, who behaved strangely yet familiarly, because just like us, they were trying to make the best under the circumstances, circumstances that are opposite but cyclic in nature, such as the cycles of winter and summer, which are beyond the human control.

While I have not read every story and fable in our world, but the theme of the cyclic world and our human condition, it seems to me a more accurate depiction of the reality and a better way to understand mankind. Why? Because unlike the archetype in the ancient near east stories that could lead to war and tragedy, in contrast the stories about the human condition of living in a cyclic world, it can help us understand that the reality is not "all or nothing", it reminds us in the real life we need both - order and chaos, summer and winter, so on and so forth. This also means there are two sides to every story, it is not always about "right" versus "wrong", even if that "other side" is the story of the "antagonist". In other words, these stories tell us the fact, that we are all trying to make the best for ourselves in a world where its physical environment shifts cyclically, beyond our control, from one extreme to another, so we really ought to try and understand each other instead of caricaturize the other side as "evil and chaotic".

And Wintersmith embodied this theme so well.

In Wintersmith, Tiffany's observations of people were often unflattery, and her apprenticeship in witchcraft meant that she often did mundane chores for the town folks (such as herding the goats and finding a lost cat for a blind old lady) instead of throwing fireballs and casting magic spells like the witches in the classical fairy tales. As the story progressed, Tiffany realized, what she observed in people and her trainings were all parts of coming to grasp with the reality of the human condition. Furthermore, at the beginning of the book Tiffany thought that Wintersmith was evil and scary while Summer Lady was warm and pleasant. Later on, however, Tiffany observed that despite Wintersmith fallen in love with her, yet he could never understand what it is like to be a human, no matter how hard he tried to become one, because after all Wintersmith is not human while Tiffany is only human. This is also when Tiffany came to understand that Winter and Summer could not be described simplistically as good or bad, because life could not go on without one or another, coming and going cyclically.

Wintersmith is oriented towards young readers, but rarely do books in this genre explore such deep and meaningful themes. Initially I missed the greater message, about the human condition, that Terry Pratchett was sending across in this book. Instead I discovered it during the process of writing this review. This is why I believe Wintersmith is one of the finest installment in the Discworld series, and like all other Discworld books, this one deserves multiple readings.