The Shepherd’s Crown

Discworld, Tiffany Aching Book 5

By Terry Pratchett, published in 2015

Rating: ★★★✩✩ (3 stars out of 5)

It has the humanity, life, exuberance and hope of a Terry Pratchett book, but none of its humor. The lights are on but nobody’s laughing.

Is it because the book is, according to the afterword, unfinished? Did Pratchett lose his enthusiasm for the world he created? Did his terminal illness sour him on telling jokes?

This is the last Discworld book and that’s sad enough. It’s also the most somber and stale Discworld book. I can only recommend it as the end of Tiffany’s story and as a capstone to the fantastic Tiffany Aching books before it.

We’ll never have more, so this disappointment will have to do.