{"id":4630,"date":"2018-07-27T05:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4630"},"modified":"2018-07-22T14:42:42","modified_gmt":"2018-07-22T21:42:42","slug":"mark-reads-a-hat-full-of-sky-chapter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/07\/mark-reads-a-hat-full-of-sky-chapter-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;A Hat Full of Sky&#8217;: Chapter 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the second chapter of <i>A Hat Full of Sky<\/i>, Tiffany meets the witch who will train her. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><b>Twoshirts<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even think you can call Twoshirts a city. Or a village. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a place that is unbelievable small, and it reminds me of a lot of the tiny, tiny towns way out in the desert in California. I remember visiting Zyzzyx, California, which is barely a bend in the road these days. It used to home to an old \u00e2\u20ac\u0153resort\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (and I use that term very, very loosely) in the early 1900s, but when I visited it about a decade ago, it was only home to a research facility for one of the Cal State universities. There wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t anything else there but a weird pool of water in a concrete lining, some cars, and a few trailers. Yet it was on the map, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the last places in California on the way to Vegas, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d always wanted to go there.<\/p>\n<p>There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sense of magic to places that are isolated, and I feel like that is something Pratchett taps into at the start of chapter two. I <i>also<\/i> feel like there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a magic to large, metropolitan cities, and I admit I gravitate to them more. (And why I like Ankh-Morpork so much.) But the remote strangeness of this and what happens to Tiffany feels intentional, at least because she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no longer at home. We see that later in the chapter as she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flying over her country on Miss Level\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s broomstick, so I feel a little more confident that this <i>is<\/i> about Tiffany leaving her comfort zone. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s away from the place she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lived her entire life, traveling with someone who isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a friend, and is about to be handed off to someone who <i>is<\/i> a stranger, all so she can learn to be a witch. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a frightening concept all by itself, and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so YOUNG to be leaving home.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help that Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s journey is plagued by the persistent presence of the hiver (whatever the hell that is!!!), which adds an extra level of weirdness to her trip. I loved seeing the shamble appear in the story, and it was neat that it was planted early so that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d get that tense sequence later with the hiver and Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ghost\u00e2\u20ac\u009d body. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a literary term for what a shamble is, but you know in genre fiction when there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some device that can detect the scary\/awful thing? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what this feels like, and its use here IS unnerving. Of course, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s partly because I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what the hiver is; I just know when it is COMING.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>BUT THERE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S MORE! One other reason this is so creepy is that Miss Tick and Miss Level have <i>secrets<\/i>. Miss Tick is very nervous, first of all, about the magical presence that no one can explain yet. (I still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if the witches actually know what hivers are or if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a mystery to them, too.) It did give us this adorable moment, though:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You are <i>very<\/i> nervous,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Tiffany. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you told me why, that means there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two of us, which is only half the nervousness each.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. Granted, it is like\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 immediately negated less than a page later:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And I was wrong. Two people means <i>twice<\/i> as much nervousness each.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>WELL, SHE TRIED. But Tiffany, observant and curious and inquisitive, cannot let go her suspicion that Miss Tick is keeping some important detail from her. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why she decides to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153split\u00e2\u20ac\u009d herself and listen in on the conversation between Miss Tick and Miss Level. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get it. What is Miss Level\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153situation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Why is it that Miss Level says that she has two noses? Why does she think that she was in two places at once? I had a theory I vocalized on video that maybe this is sort of like how Tiffany can split herself? What if Miss Level is not <i>actually<\/i> here with Tiffany, but elsewhere? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a great theory, mind you, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to figure out why these witches would be so coy with Tiffany rather than tell her the truth. I agree with Polly; Miss Level is <i>hiding<\/i> something, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a little concerned about what that is. Are they trying to protect her? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>That cheerfulness has got cracks around the edges. Something isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t right here\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Miss Level is overcompensating for something. But <i>what<\/i>?<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/eRDixVlKOM0<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AngerIsAGift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the second chapter of A Hat Full of Sky, Tiffany meets the witch who will train her. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[551,463,248],"class_list":["post-4630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-a-hat-full-of-sky","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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