{"id":4681,"date":"2018-09-07T05:00:13","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4681"},"modified":"2018-09-02T08:32:28","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T15:32:28","slug":"mark-reads-a-hat-full-of-sky-chapter-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/09\/mark-reads-a-hat-full-of-sky-chapter-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘A Hat Full of Sky’: Chapter 15"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fifteenth and final chapter of A Hat Full of Sky<\/i>, Tiffany returns home and makes her own hat. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What an ending, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It had been an interesting winter.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Perhaps the biggest understatement in all the Discworld<\/i> books. But not wrong! Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s experience across A Hat Full of Sky<\/i> was about discovery\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnot just of her own world, but herself, too. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important that so much of the first page of this chapter repeats a motif: She learned. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what so much of this experience has been, hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? Tiffany was sent out into the world to be taught by Miss Level, and once there, she was thrust into something she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect and, for a moment, didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe that she could conquer. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just a reference to the hiver, despite that the hiver was a vital part of this story. No, Tiffany also<\/i> didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to do the things that Miss Level did as a witch. She didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to help others; she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to be around people like Mr. Weavall. She didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to tell stories<\/i>, to play off the expectations of others, to do every day magic.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
But that all changes, and Pratchett concludes A Hat Full of Sky<\/i> not by making Tiffany an exact copy of Miss Tick, Miss Level, or Granny Weatherwax. No, Tiffany always had to be her own witch. Always<\/i>. And in her land, in the land of the Chalk, Tiffany became the witch that her<\/i> people needed. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why she returns for the Sheepbellies, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153when the shepherds\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 year began.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why she helps the future happen. Because a witch is not a copy of another, and because a witch adapts to the environment they are in. Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that exactly what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen across these thirty-some books? Witches adapt<\/i>. And for Tiffany, the land of the Chalk demands things differently than the lands of the mountains or the land of the Ramtops or Lancre.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Tiffany, without a complaint and without hesitation, brought life into the world, and she saved the ewes, too:<\/p>\n
And she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d walked back home proudly in the morning, bloody to the elbows, but it had been the blood of life.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is immediately given a parallel in Jeannie, who Tiffany visits and gives an important gift: soapwort shampoo and clean torn-up handkerchiefs, something she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll need for the eight<\/i> children she had with Rob Anybody. AND I WAS DESTROYED BY THIS:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Tiffany had been allowed to hold all eight of what she kept thinking of as the Roblets, born at the same time as the lambs. Seven of them were bawling and fighting one another. The eighth lay quietly, biding her time. The future happened.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And Jeannie brought that future to life. Two women, separated by age and experience and species and location, still brought the future to life.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another element to this that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s powerful, and Pratchett reaches back to seeds planted both at the beginning of this book, within The Wee Free Men<\/i>, within the Discworld <\/i>series as a whole, to show us the importance of storytelling. The very idea of a witch, even on the Disc, carries preconceived notions with it. Which I do find interesting; we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve not seen that many examples of bad<\/i> witches, the kind that let power go to their heads, the kind that people should<\/i> find terrifying. Yet the specter of this hangs over many of these cultures. As noted in the text:<\/p>\n
The people of the Chalk didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like witches. They had always come from outside. They had always come as strangers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read this as a condemnation of witches in a traditional sense. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that witches are outsiders<\/i>. The world of the Chalk is so, so different than anywhere else on the Disc! But I am fascinated about how there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a parallel to witchery on the Roundworld, particularly since these women are misunderstood and feared. How far does that parallel go? The Author\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Note refers to\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 uh\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 our<\/i> Witch Trials, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m curious if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ever been anything that severe in the Discworld. I feel like witches, as feared and intimidating as they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been, are still an integral part of a lot of these rural communities, so punishing\/prosecuting them wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really work? How could these communities functions without these women of duty? I expect that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also a HUGE amount of commentary to be had about why witches are in rural places, and wizards populate in larger cities. Witches are born to hostile or non-witch-friendly places, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got to be why Miss Tick is such an important witch, right?<\/p>\n
Anyway, just a bit of a stray thought about that. The point I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m leading to is how important the story of Tiffany eventually becomes to the Chalk. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think of her as an outsider; rather, they draw parallels to Granny Aching, and it allows them to accept her as one of them:\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
So if witch (Granny Aching) be, then she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our<\/i> witch. She knows about sheep, she does. Hah, and I heard they had a big sort of trial for witches up in them mountains and our Tiffany showed \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcem what a girl from the Chalk can do. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s modern times, right? We got a witch now, and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s better\u00e2\u20ac\u2122n anyone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s! No one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s throwing Granny Aching\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s granddaughter in a pond!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
She becomes a point of pride for the Chalk, and Tiffany allows that. She becomes their story, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing wrong with that. If anything, Tiffany learned what that story means for others, how to use it to be a better witch and to serve her community. And she would not have known any of this if she hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t gone along with Miss Tick, met Miss Level, and learned from those two and<\/i> Granny Weatherwax. Which is why this passage hit me so hard:\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It really summarizes what Tiffany went through in A Hat Full of Sky<\/i>. Tiffany sees the world of the Chalk through new eyes; the people there see her through new eyes, too. And that new understanding has increased her appreciation for what Granny Aching did, what the Land did for her and continues to do for her, and what the witches taught her. Open your eyes, and then open them again. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what this whole book gave her, wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? A new way to open her eyes, to see the world, to pay attention to it, to appreciate its complexities and hardships and its joys<\/i>.<\/p>\n
And it really had to end with Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hat. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reminded of the fact that Miss Tick had a hat that you couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see most of the time, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an echo of that idea in Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hat full of sky. Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hat didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to be a physical thing. In fact, the beauty of the open sky, both during the day and at night, was enough to fill Tiffany with an everyday magic. What better way to remind yourself of the power of being a witch?<\/p>\n
Whew, THIS BOOK WAS SO STELLAR!!! I loved it a great deal, and I look forward to the next Tiffany Aching book. In the meantime: we will be moving on to The Science of Discworld II<\/i> until September 24th. At that point, as reviews for The Book of Night With Moon<\/i> come to an end, we will alternate a Science<\/i> book with a regular Discworld<\/i> book! So, Going Postal<\/i> will alternate at that point, and then we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just keep alternating through The Science of Discworld III<\/i>. IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S ALL DISCWORLD<\/i> ALL THE TIME, FRIENDS.<\/p>\n
Onwards!<\/p>\n
https:\/\/youtu.be\/uzfvsaNMz38<\/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 fifteenth and final chapter of A Hat Full of Sky, Tiffany returns home and makes her own hat. 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-4681","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\/4681","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=4681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}