Book Review: The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett’s final Discworld novel isn’t his best, but it’s worth a read for long time fans.

It’s a hard thing to sit down with the last book by an author you respect and say ‘this wasn’t his best work’ but in the case of The Shepherd’s Crown, it’s not only true, but it’s utterly understandable. Terry Pratchett was a notoriously prolific author — his first novel was published in 1971, the year I was born, and this book was published in 2015, a writing career spanning 44 years. Pratchett has been a presence in my life longer than I was aware of him, and so, his death permeates my experience of reading it as much as it must have his writing it.

The reason I say this isn’t his best work is simple — it’s clearly not finished. Oh, it ends — the story concludes. Avoiding spoilers all I can say is that it feels as if the novel was in a rough draft state when Mister Pratchett died, and while others stepped in to make sure the book reached those that would read it, I know of at least one scene that supposedly would have been added. Thus, the book takes on the tone of an elegy, even while its themes are not in of themselves elegiac. The story itself is at times hopeful, and it always feels like Pratchett. This is a book that understands what it is to be human, and tries to gently shepherd you into that awareness — it is a book that knows the end is near. It is a book where the death of a major character starts the plot engine, and at the end that drives my reaction to it.

The plot isn’t complicated on the surface (Pratchett’s ability comes in how he layers it in the telling, in my opinion) — Tiffany Aching is already struggling with her responsibilities as a witch when her mentor, Granny Weatherwax, dies and leaves Tiffany everything. This ends up putting Tiffany in the position of First among Equals for the witches, and means that when Weatherwax’s death encourages the elves to make an attempt to enter the world of men and regain their power, Tiffany must lead the defense against them. At the same time she’s trying to train Geoffrey, a young man disgusted with his father’s cruel hunting traditions.

It’s not a bad story and it has the typical Pratchett touches — Geoffrey’s attempt to give old men sheds is as wry as you’d expect, and it comes back to good use — but I can’t shed the feeling of it not quite being where Pratchett would have eventually gotten it to be. Perhaps that’s an unavoidable consequence of my knowledge of the book’s creation and its author’s life and death. Knowing that Pratchett wanted a different ending for the book but died before he could write it, for example, makes reading it painful at times.

I didn’t love this book. In fact, I possibly resented it. This is an unfair reaction to it, I suppose, but part of me is furious that Pratchett didn’t get more time to finish this, that I’ll never get to see the book he would have written. The characters are likeable — long time readers will be interested to see how Tiffany Aching steps fully into the role of a witch and an adult (personally, if not chronologically) and I liked Geoffrey well enough. The theme of his disgust with cruel hunting felt dropped, but again this book feels like a collection of scenes written by Pratchett but not yet linked together.

Still, there’s much here worth reading. I do recommend the book, wholeheartedly. It’s rare that an author works on something with full awareness that his or her time is short, racing the clock as it were. Terry Pratchett may not have won the race but he still ran it, and that’s to be admired. This may not be Pratchett the writer at his best, but it is a remarkable achievement for all that. Saying it’s not Pratchett at his best is still saying it’s Pratchett — if you like his work, you’ll find a lot to like here. And it is suffused with a desire to leave behind something for others, there’s a nobility to this book that I find undeniable in its intent.

My wife once related a story of one of her professors who dismissed Pratchett as ‘facile’ and at the time, I was in a less contemplative frame of mind and I agreed with him. I’m ashamed of that somewhat ignorant response — having read Night Watch and Thud! I know that while he may have made it look facile in the sense of it seeming effortless, it was anything but, and he absolutely never ignored the complexities of life. They made up everything he ever wrote, and The Shepherd’s Crown shows flashes of that same fire. I think, given more time, it might well have been his best work. It’s still worthwhile despite not having gotten that time.

Is it a good book? Yes. It’s not the book it could have been, the book it should have been, but that’s no one’s fault, and certainly not the book‘s fault. The clock ran out. The race was lost, as we all eventually lose that race. But it was run, and we have this last piece of evidence of it, and it’s worth your time to read it and absorb what almost was.

The Shepherd’s Crown can be purchased as a paperback or hardcover, ebook or audiobook at Amazon. There’s even a few different audiobook versions if you’d like to choose a narrator and you can sign up for 30 free days of Audible. If you don’t have the Amazon Kindle app for your mobile device, you can download it for free. Blizzard Watch makes a small commission when you buy the book in any form from the above Amazon link, download the free Kindle Reader App or download the free trial of Audible, so consider supporting our site through any of these ways.