{"id":4638,"date":"2018-08-08T05:00:11","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4638"},"modified":"2018-08-05T04:18:12","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T11:18:12","slug":"mark-reads-a-hat-full-of-sky-chapter-4-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/08\/mark-reads-a-hat-full-of-sky-chapter-4-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘A Hat Full of Sky’: Chapter 4, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the second half of the fourth chapter of A Hat Full of Sky<\/i>, the Feegles chase after Tiffany in a very interesting way; Tiffany meets another student witch. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, HELP.<\/p>\n

The Feegles<\/b><\/p>\n

I expected that this would be ridiculous, but I assumed that the reaction to the Feegles pretending to be a human would basically be everyone running away in horror. (Eventually, that is<\/i> technically what happened.) Thus, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never be able to get on that cart, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to come up with something else. However, I left out a crucial detail: the Feegles are sitting upon a veritable mountain of gold, all of which holds no real meaning to them beyond… well, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s put it in their words:<\/p>\n

In the mound, they mostly used the old coins and plates to reflect candlelight and give the place a nice glow. It was no hardship to give some away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And give it away they do, and the power of money to wash over people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suspicions, problems, and horrors is undeniable here. I felt like there were multiple layers of jokes at work in this long sequence. First of all, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that joke that sometimes a person is actually x<\/i> number of y<\/i> creature inside a trenchcoat, and holy shit, that is almost exactly what this is. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a person! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually two hundred Nac Mac Feegle inside a smelly, ferret home otherwise known as a stolen coat. On top of that, Pratchett stretches the commentary on money further and further, first to see if the carter will actually deny the Feegles passage; then, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s whether or not the carter will care if the Feegles threw a package of eggs off the cart; then<\/i>, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s if the carter will deny going faster. By the time they make the switch to the coach that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll take them up into the mountains, Pratchett has piled one absurdity on top of another, each of them solved with one more giant gold coin. I did like that even though they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realize it, they were actually paying these drivers incredibly<\/i> well? At least they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re being given a great wage???\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Finally, I am totally interested in talking about this with y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, but in the final scenes in the coach to the mountains, I felt like Pratchett was making reference to something that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s familiar to many of us: the image of a person on public transportation who hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t showered and is talking to themselves. As someone who has been homeless, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel like this bothered, and perhaps it is because there didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to be a cruelty to this experience. Now, I could be wrong about the intent of it, but it felt so<\/i> specific to the experience, you know? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m curious if others felt the same way and if it deserves further thinking beyond the obvious.<\/p>\n
Petulia<\/b><\/p>\n
I never really considered that Miss Level would be teaching other<\/i> young girls at the same time, but it makes a lot of sense, right? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like there is only one girl born in an entire generation who has the potential to be a witch. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Buffy<\/i>. At the same time, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a discomfort that Tiffany experiences in this chapter that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m having a hard time placing. Initially\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand I said this in the video\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmaybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that Petulia isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the same kind<\/i> of witch that Miss Level is or that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s teaching Tiffany to be. When I read that section where Petulia tried to fly the broom, it seemed to me that maybe<\/i> Petulia did not have the natural power to be a witch. If the broom only jerked and<\/i> Petulia had to turn it by hand (after three years<\/i> of studying), was it destined that she be a witch?<\/p>\n
Petulia also calls it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153crafting,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a colloquial term for witchcraft, something that Miss Level notes is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153getting popular again.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I have a theory. Based on Petulia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flying ability (or lack of it, I should say), based on how long Miss Level\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been teaching her, based on the Sabbat meeting, and based on Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s discomfort, I think that this is just a superficial form of witchcraft. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all about image<\/i>, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why Petulia seemed so disappointed that Tiffany wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wearing black or had no jewelry. She thinks there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a very specific way to be a witch, and Tiffany does not fit that. Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t anyone feel uncomfortable with a situation like this? I could be completely off-base here, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very<\/i> interested to see what this Sabbat will be like.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
https:\/\/youtu.be\/xrBrFA0_2A8<\/p>\n
Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n
– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the second half of the fourth chapter of A Hat Full of Sky, the Feegles chase after Tiffany in a very interesting way; Tiffany meets another student witch. 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-4638","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\/4638","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=4638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}