The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

The Wee Free Men is part of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I've read good things about him as an author so I thought I would check this out. It's the story of nine year old Tiffany Aching. She lives in the hills on her family farm. Her Granny was a shepherd and a witch. Tiffany soon learns she also has the gift. Her younger brother gets kidnapped by the Queen of another world, and she begins her journey to get him back armed with a frying pan, talking toad, and an army of red-headed little men.

At first glance, this book seems like a fun young adult fantasy. I was about half way through it at the start of today and I tried to keep plugging through, but ended up skimming the last half. I stopped skimming and read the last several pages. I really wanted to love this book, or even like it. I think I only mildly enjoyed it. It was humorous. And I enjoyed the descriptions of the worlds and monsters. I also like the idea of Fairy tale monsters coming to life. My biggest problem with it is the language of the Nac Mac Feegles. It has a Scottish base and it got a bit tiring reading it as it was written. I think I would have enjoyed this much more if it were just stated that they spoke with a Scottish accent and then written with regular English. Instead it was written in the Scottish dialect and I found myself having to slow my reading down to catch what they were saying. This greatly annoyed me! Hmm....maybe I would really enjoy these books more as audiobooks! I'll have to think about that.

So now, I have A Hat Full of Sky sitting here from the library and I'm debating whether to read it now, or skip it all together and go right to Wintersmith.