The Wee Free Men: A Story of Discworld
Written by Terry Pratchett
Narrated by Stephen Briggs
Description
Armed only with a frying pan and her common sense, Tiffany Aching, a young witch-to-be, is all that stands between the monsters of Fairyland and the warm, green Chalk country that is her home. Forced into Fairyland to seek her kidnapped brother, Tiffany allies herself with the Chalk's local Nac Mac Feegle – aka the Wee Free – a clan of sheep-stealing, sword-wielding, six-inch-high blue men who are as fierce as they are funny.
Together, they battle through an eerie and ever-shifting landscape, fighting brutal flying fairies, dream-spinning dromes, and grimhounds – black dogs with eyes of fire and teeth of razors -- before ultimately confronting the Queen of the Elves, absolute ruler of a world in which reality intertwines with nightmare. And in the final showdown, Tiffany must face her cruel power alone...
In a riveting narrative equal parts suspense and humor, Carnegie Medalist Terry Pratchett returns to his internationally popular Discworld with a breath-taking tale certain to leave fans, new and old, enthralled.
A HarperAudio production.
About the author
Sir Terry Pratchett was the internationally bestselling author of more than thirty books, including his phenomenally successful Discworld series. His young adult novel, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal, and Where's My Cow?, his Discworld book for “readers of all ages,” was a New York Times bestseller. His novels have sold more than seventy five million (give or take a few million) copies worldwide. Named an Officer of the British Empire “for services to literature,” Pratchett lived in England. He died in 2015 at the age of sixty-six.
Reviews
What people think about The Wee Free Men
4.1Reader reviews
- (5/5)A new witch is born in the Discworld as Tiffany Aching comes into her own by making friends with the Nac Mac Feegle, crossing over into the world of faerie to save her brother from the snow queen, and learns to open her eyes and then open them again. It's enough even to impress the likes of Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax. I'm now something like thirty books into the Discworld series and can finally say that I've turned the corner from just fair-to-middlin' enjoying them to actively loving them. Pratchett has hit a stride with these last few books that really works and I hope it continues for the next ten or eleven books.
- (4/5)Tiffany Aching is 9-year old who comes across the "Wee Free Men" as she is searching for her younger brother who has been stolen by the "Quin" (a.k.a. Queen). The Wee Free Men are about 6 inches tall, love to drink and fight, are painted blue, wear kilts and have fabulous Scottish accents! They are helping Tiffany find her brother, and at the same time, she is also learning about becoming a witch.I am not a big fan of fantasy, but this was an easy one to get into. I think the Scottish accents helped, too! ;-) Of course, there is plenty of humour to be found in the book as well, which really helps those of us who aren't big fantasy readers enjoy the book even more. I really liked it.
- (5/5)When a monster appears in a stream near her home and tries to eat her brother, Tiffany Aching, who has recently decided to be a witch, goes in search of a magical education.Nobody can turn a phrase quite like Sir Terry. Though I'm not as much of a Discworld aficionado as some, I do love to visit there every once in a while, and the Tiffany Aching books are a lovely, self-contained bit of the sprawling Discworld universe. Plus, they have the Nac Mac Feegle, which are well worth the price of admission. Crivens!
- (4/5)No Death! Chapters! Good read tho!
- (4/5)The Wee Free Men is one of several novels (Carpet People, Truckers, Wings, Diggers, A Hatful of Sky, I Shall Wear Midnight, Maskerade) where this author returns to his tiny person fixation (he said this was inspired by T.H. White’s book Miss Masham’s Repose, in which a colony of Lilliputians is discovered in someone’s garden). They’re just like homo sapiens every time but their physical form has been greatly scaled down and their personalities have been outrageously scaled-up. In Wee Free Men, the little folk (Nac Mac Feegles) are miniature Glaswegian bandits, who serve on the apron strings of their female Kelda. They make friends with a trainee witch and then have to combat big, bad problems, which they do so with a blithe disrespect for safety and personal property. Unlike Rowling’s indoor wizard school, the educational environment for trainee witches appears to be the open countryside. As with many other Pratchett books, there has to be something nasty for them to face or you wouldn’t be able to see them be tested and how they deal with emotions like loss. There’s also the sense of our world of knowledge and control being very small and always surrounded by this huge background of fuzzy chaos and the unknown, always trying to pop something malign into our realm which someone odd and special (in alliance with uniquely talented and amusingly irresponsible friends) is going to have to deal with. This is a good book but the stereotypes might be funny to some readers and insulting to others (I thought funny, but you never know) and the author seemed unable to move on from the idea of small slapstick people bumping into each other like the Time Bandits.
- (4/5)I heard this was a good place to jump into Discworld. Fun read.