{"id":5195,"date":"2020-06-04T05:00:43","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T12:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=5195"},"modified":"2020-05-31T10:06:32","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T17:06:32","slug":"mark-reads-the-shepherds-crown-epilogue-afterwords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2020\/06\/mark-reads-the-shepherds-crown-epilogue-afterwords\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Shepherd&#8217;s Crown&#8217;: Epilogue \/ Afterwords"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the epilogue of <i>The Shepherd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Crown<\/i>, Tiffany finds her magic. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to finish <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><b>Trigger Warning: For discussion of grief.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Wow, typing that previous sentence made me cry.<\/p>\n<p>What a journey, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. I will have more to say about <i>Discworld<\/i> as a whole in tomorrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s post, which will partially be devoted to that, partially devoted to a really cool surprise, and partially devoted to an extended Q&amp;A. (We last did one prior to me starting <i>Hogfather<\/i>, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been about three and a half years or so since then. Hey, I hate the passage of time!) So, I want this last proper review of <i>The Shepherd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Crown<\/i> to be about Tiffany Aching.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote in the previous review about how pleased I was with Pratchett rooting the end of this book into Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own journey of self-acceptance. While I still stand by that, my whole interpretation of Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arc is missing the epilogue, and <i>this<\/i> makes her journey complete. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough that Tiffany chose the Chalk, though that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s OBVIOUSLY incredibly important. That was part of the emotional tension of the novel: How could Tiffany possibly maintain two steadings for any significant length of time? Sure, it was nice to have Geoffrey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s help, and both Becky and Nancy could have been trained to assist her. But there was no maintaining a double steading in any permanent sense.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Tiffany needed more than that one decision, though, and in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Whisper on the Chalk,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she decides to truly settle down in this role for the rest of her life. That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s choosing a static life. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to imagine that Tiffany will never, ever be bored as the witch of the Chalk. No, what I mean by settling down is that she steps into herself. She does that by using the old iron wheels (iron being a constant motif of change in this book and <i>Raising Steam<\/i>) from Granny Aching\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s old hut to build herself a new one. <i>Literally<\/i> build herself a new one.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Why that? Why couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t she let Mr. Block build it? Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ownership of the hut is the point. It has to be hers, through and through. So much of what happened in this book was an inheritance: she inherited a steading. A home. A bed. A pair of boots. A whole separate life. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think anyone else really saw it that way, but look how much Tiffany has struggled with literally and metaphorically filling someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s boots.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>No more. I read this chapter as Tiffany assuring herself that everything, from here on out, would be her own. Not a hand-me-down, not built by someone else, but entirely hers. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not an insult to Mr. Block, either. As she states:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6but all the work on this hut must be done by me. It will be mine, from top to bottom, and I will pull it to where the larks rise. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll still be a witch when anyone should call. But there I will live.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t about permanence. She says she will \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pull it to where the larks rise,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a hint here of one of those possible larks: Preston. Shepherd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s huts are meant to move, but for now, this spot, so close to where Granny Aching was buried, is perfect. So Tiffany constructs a place that is comfortable, that has what she needs, that is her own. She gets her blessing, too, or at least that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how I chose to read the scene where she sees Granny Weatherwax and Granny Aching under the trees near her new home. She did wonderfully, didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t she? She made Granny Weatherwax proud. She made Granny Aching proud! She <i>is<\/i> the shepherd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crown, and over the course of these five books, she grew into an incredible young woman. Hell, <i>I&#8217;m<\/i> proud of her.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also sad. Some of that sadness is the from the text itself. Pratchett reminds us that Granny Weatherwax is everywhere, a sentiment I am learning to accept in my own life. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen my little journey I took on Baize\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s birthday, and it was something I designed with my therapist, a means of celebrating this person I loved so much who was so suddenly not here anymore. I had bought a plane ticket before all this pandemic business so that I could be in Los Angeles for his birthday; I wanted to see him. Well, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153see\u00e2\u20ac\u009d him, of course, but you know what I mean. Understandably, I was distraught when I had to cancel the ticket, but my therapist also works in palliative care. This is her speciality. (And I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe in any greater powers in the universe, but even I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deny the sheer luck of me being the LITERAL last patient my therapist could take on before closing off new patients, and it turns out dealing with death and grief is her #1 greatest skill.)<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I bring this up because of what Pratchett does here. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of talk in the end of this book about remembering and how that act is a powerful thing. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what Tiffany wants for Nightshade, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also what she does for Granny Weatherwax. The act of recalling memories allows a person to be\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, anywhere you want. My therapist did her best to help shift my thinking: Maybe I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be able to visit Baize\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grave, but wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t there something I could do safely here in New York to celebrate him? What was the act of being in a cemetery supposed to do for me?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I wanted to feel close again. I wanted him to feel like I still cared.<\/p>\n<p>And you can do that <i>anywhere<\/i>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not lost on me that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking about all of this in the final review of the final book of Terry Pratchett. It hurts. Was he telling us that he, in fact, always would be everywhere? Knowing the timeline a little better due to the Afterwords, he knew he was on limited time. So maybe this wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just about ending Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story. Maybe he was telling us that one day, his story would end, too. But that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean he was <i>gone<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>GNU and all that.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story is what ends the <i>Discworld<\/i> books, and what a hell of a note to go out on. His final line speaks to the entire body of work (some of which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve still not read), and I must quote it here:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The magic was already here.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The concept of magic in a fantasy series was subverted so often in <i>Discworld<\/i>. There was the magic of belief, and how belief could make things real. Narrativium was it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own kind of magic. There was Granny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s headology, and then there was the weird academic magic of the wizards. Almost nothing here was a strict application of fantasy magic. (Part of me does wonder how much reading this affected my own decision in crafting magic in my first fantasy novel. It seems pretty cool to think that maybe I subconsciously did whatever the fuck I wanted to because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly what Pratchett did.) In the Tiffany books, though, magic did not unfold as it did in other books about witches. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not headology; there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not aesthetic witchery like we got with Magrat; Tiffany had her own magic. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t divorce her story from the Chalk. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s linked to Granny Aching and being a shepherd. It is, to put it simply, her own, unique to Tiffany Aching.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d argue that Terry Pratchett\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s magic was unique, too, but let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about that more tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/Vr-iCHRVmHc<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/us.macmillan.com\/books\/9781250169211\">You can now pre-order my second YA novel, <i>Each of Us a Desert<\/i>, which will be released on September 15, 2020 from Tor Teen!<\/a><br \/>\n&#8211; Not only that, but my very first pre-order campaign is now live for North American readers! <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/EachOfUsADesertPreorder\">If you submit proof of pre-order, you can get a limited edition print that comes with the book<\/a>.<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>&#8211; 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 epilogue of The Shepherd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Crown, Tiffany finds her magic. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to finish 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":[463,248,567],"class_list":["post-5195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-shepherds-crown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->