{"id":4671,"date":"2018-08-28T05:00:47","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T12:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4671"},"modified":"2018-08-26T10:48:18","modified_gmt":"2018-08-26T17:48:18","slug":"mark-reads-a-hat-full-of-sky-chapter-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/08\/mark-reads-a-hat-full-of-sky-chapter-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘A Hat Full of Sky’: Chapter 11"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the eleventh chapter of A Hat Full of Sky<\/i>, Tiffany unlocks the secret of the hiver. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read A Hatful of Sky<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For discussion of consent, anxiety<\/b><\/p>\n

Holy shit, THIS IS AMAZING.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes, We Get What We Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Deserve<\/b><\/p>\n

Hi, look at the neat clue to one aspect of the hiver: it grants things that it perceives a person wants regardless of whether they deserve<\/i> it. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no moral framework here for the hiver, and why would there be? Many of the creatures it consumed prior to to getting to Tiffany had no sense of right and wrong, deserving or undeserving. It was just desire<\/i>, nothing more. They were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153killing machines, the most powerful creatures in their world\u00e2\u20ac\u201donce.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Now I understand why Pratchett seeded in some of the more darker, spiteful thoughts in Tiffany, some of which we saw in The Wee Free Men<\/i>. He needed to have a character who struggled with her own desires, who demonstrated the very, very human conflict of juggling what one wants and what one should<\/i> do.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also not lost on me that the hiver doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t consider another option until<\/i> it takes over Tiffany and finally understands what it means to be human. Sebastian Bustle did not have that same affect, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in part because of his personality. He was egotistical, self-centered, and concerned with power. It was a young girl who got the hiver to think differently! It was Tiffany who finally accepted that everyone<\/i> thought of the hiver in the wrong way, too. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the first to suggest that it was frightened<\/i>, not that it was some evil, malevolent thing. Well, Sebastian observed that, but he never asked why<\/i>. He just accepted that it was afraid, and that was the end of his curiosity.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, memory fades,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Mistress Weatherwax.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
OH MY GOD, THAT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S ANOTHER CLUE, ISN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T IT? I suspect Granny figured out some of this, too, or perhaps this is just Pratchett slyly dropping another hint as to the hiver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true nature. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s memory faded. <\/i>After eons and eons of existing, of being aware and terrified the whole time<\/i>, how could the hiver ever remember another time when it might have been a single consciousness instead of a collection of everything it took?<\/p>\n
Anyway, before I get into that<\/i>, I did want to state that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hoping we do get to see more of the Trials because I still want to know what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re like. At the same time, I completely understand why Pratchett didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t include details beyond the people present. The atmosphere is what we needed. If that shark metaphor was going to work, Tiffany needed to be singled out amidst a crowd of powerful, powerful people. And what better example of that than a gigantic crowd of witches who have gathered for a competition? Granny was intentional about that, too, and she tells Tiffany as much:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Look around, eh? Down here you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t move for amulets and wands and whatnot! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be bound<\/i> to keep away, eh?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course, that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t true, and I think I know why. The hiver stayed away when Granny<\/i> was the only witch around, and that was because it contained part of Tiffany. Tiffany<\/i> was afraid of Granny.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
But was she afraid of witches in general?<\/p>\n
Yeah, so I highly suspect that part of Granny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plan was to deliberately draw out the hiver at the trials, using Tiffany as both bait and<\/i> the solution. That solution is hinted at again<\/i> when the hiver begins to hunt down Tiffany and she starts trying to determine the meaning of the Third Wish thought. Look what she thinks when she runs into Annagramma:\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you like, but that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t me and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m better now,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Tiffany, knowing she was lying. It had<\/i> been her, and that was important. She had to remember that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And what had the hiver done what it had been her?\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
It had given her what it had always wanted.<\/p>\n
It had granted her deepest, darkest wishes<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s here that Pratchett delves into a reality for all of us: we are constantly, constantly<\/i> fighting our urges to take, to hurt, to harm, to do exactly what we want and damn the consequences! Obviously, some people are better at this than others, but in this case, the hiver literally knows nothing else. It isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trying to viciously control people out of spite, and it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trying to spread evil. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just doing the only thing it thinks humans want.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Tiffany feels so perfectly suited for this, so, again, I feel like that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what Granny wanted. She wanted<\/i> Tiffany to be right there, right then, because she knew she wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to lose. No, she knew that Tiffany<\/i> would not lose:\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Now, then… do you have it in you to be a witch by noonlight, far away from your hills?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There was no other answer, not to Granny Weatherwax.<\/p>\n
Granny Weatherwax bowed low and then took a few steps back.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153In your own time, then, madam,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly what Tiffany does. In her own time, and in her own space (LITERALLY), Tiffany does what no one else had done:<\/p>\n
She just talks<\/i> to the hiver.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Well, she finally figures out why the hiver had never been working for her, what was missing, and why stories are so important to the world. I really don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tire of seeing this theme crop up again and again, as it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of my favorite things to talk about. (And a version of this appears in my next book, too, though the context is much, much different.) Plus, Pratchett calls back to the importance of the Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home, the Chalk, in multiple ways, from Tiffany rising the Horse from the hillside to the make-up of the chalk itself, which Tiffany uses to help the hiver understand time, evolution, and the cyclical notion of death.<\/p>\n
And really, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my favorite part of this whole chapter. More than anything else, the hiver wants death<\/i>. Since it came into being, it explains to Tiffany, it has been aware of everything<\/i>:\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
We have done it for an eternity. No sleep, no rest, just endless… endless experience, endless awareness<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I said this on video, but this particular aspect of the hiver reminded me of how my anxiety works. Honestly, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eerily similar: I cannot turn off how \u00e2\u20ac\u0153aware\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I am of the world. My mind buzzes with activity and awareness until it physically causes me pain<\/i>. I actually had a moment the other day, in the midst of an anxiety spiral that I knew<\/i> was absurd (yet I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop my brain from thinking about it), where I wondered what life must be like for people who can just turn this stuff off<\/i>. What does that feel like? How do people go through life without it? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve developed so many coping mechanisms to try and make life livable, and there are people who just… don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do this???<\/p>\n
So, maybe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m biased here, but… this chapter made me feel sympathy<\/i> for the hiver, for a being that had no idea what it was doing until it met Tiffany, the young girl who was so quintessentially human that it made the hiver rethink everything<\/i>. It wanted silence. It wanted death.<\/p>\n
Tiffany granted the hiver that.<\/p>\n
She conjures a door to death\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s realm with the power of stories. (I LOVE THIS SEQUENCE A LOT.) She takes the hiver to the long desert, the one we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen so many times before. (Well, not the<\/i> one; it conjures differently for each person, of course.) She gives the hiver a name<\/i>, a sense that it is a single being, AND THEN SHE TEACHES ARTHUR HOW TO DIE. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just!!! So much!!!<\/p>\n
What the hell is Death going to say to her??? WHAT COULD DEATH SAY? Oh, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so excited for the next chapter, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/youtu.be\/DmWC2WmxpOk<\/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 eleventh chapter of A Hat Full of Sky, Tiffany unlocks the secret of the hiver. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read A Hatful of Sky.\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-4671","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\/4671","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=4671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}