A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett

Episode 138

Release Date: May 1, 2024

Your hosts read A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett. They talk about young witches, metaphors for puberty, and theoretical nostalgia. They also discuss how this Tiffany Aching YA novel fits in to the larger Discworld series.

Find us on discord: https://discord.gg/dpNHTWVu6b or support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fictionfanspod

Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris” - Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

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Episode Transcript*

*this transcript is AI generated, please excuse the mess.

Lilly: 0:04

Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. I'm Lily,

Sara: 0:10

And I'm Sarah.

Lilly: 0:11

and we are embarking on another step on our journey to the center of the Discworld with the book Hatful of Sky. A Hatful of Sky? The

Sara: 0:20

a a hatful of sky.

Lilly: 0:23

Pretty sure it's THE Hatful of Sky because every book title has the word THE in front of it.

Sara: 0:27

It is indeed a hatful of sky.

Lilly: 0:30

All right, fine. I'll give you that one. But before we get into it, what's something great that happened recently?

Sara: 0:36

Something great that happened recently. I'm gonna say that Mr. Squeak's surgery went well, because it did, and I'm very pleased that she no longer has a lump in her. So that's something good.

Lilly: 0:51

That is good.

Sara: 0:52

Scraping the bottom of the barrel just a little bit because it has been a week. But

Lilly: 0:57

It is, but no matter how bad the week is, something happened that was good.

Sara: 1:00

Yes.

Lilly: 1:02

I tried a new pho place yesterday. Daniel and I are on our own journey to find a favorite pho place, which is a very fun challenge. Mostly because it means eating a lot of pho.

Sara: 1:16

I mean, that sounds delightful.

Lilly: 1:20

The first place we went to was amazing, but like way overpriced. And this place was good, and also half the price, which makes it great. And that's why it's a great thing that happened. What are you drinking today?

Sara: 1:32

I am drinking Galley Grey Regeneration Tea by Megan's Marvelous Medicinals, which is a tea that was given to me over the weekend. It is earl grey with cornflowers and lemon peel, and I like it quite a bit. It is a little more floral than earl grey normally is, because of the cornflowers, but not, like, overwhelmingly so.

Lilly: 1:56

Yeah. How's the, the lemon peel? Can you taste that? Is it like nice and citrus y?

Sara: 2:01

It's not very citrusy at all, which is good because I don't like citrus in my tea.

Lilly: 2:05

Oh. Well, okay then.

Sara: 2:07

Which is funny because I love, like, lemons, and lemonade, and like citrusy things, but I just don't like it hot.

Lilly: 2:15

Interesting. You like hot toddies, don't you?

Sara: 2:18

Not particularly.

Lilly: 2:19

Oh, all right, you can just be wrong then. More for me.

Sara: 2:24

I mean, I'm not saying that I will not drink a hot toddy, but they're not my favorite.

Lilly: 2:29

You wouldn't turn down a hot toddy. You just wouldn't order one. I see.

Sara: 2:33

Yeah. Yeah.

Lilly: 2:35

Well, now I wish I was drinking lemon tea. I'm not, though. It's mint. Mint medley. Because it is gray, as you might have been able to tell by the fact that I had pho yesterday. I am very much a mood reader and a mood eater. Well, have you read anything else lately?

Sara: 2:53

Um, I'm trying to think if I have done any reading this week that has not been podcast reading, and I think the answer is no. It's been that kind of a week.

Lilly: 3:04

I mean, we had two recordings this week. I feel like that's fair.

Sara: 3:07

That's true, we did have two recordings this week.

Lilly: 3:10

So if that's what you mean by that kind of week, I agree, but I feel like that was not what you meant.

Sara: 3:15

No, it's just, it's been so much of a week that I forgot that we had had another recording this week. That's what I mean by it's been that kind of a week.

Lilly: 3:23

Uh, similarly, I was studying for a professional certification test, which I passed. Yay.

Sara: 3:29

Congratulations.

Lilly: 3:30

Thank you. That doesn't count as my good thing, because it was not as good as FUH, but

Sara: 3:34

Fair enough.

Lilly: 3:35

that's what I was reading. Fun. But, the Tiffany Aching books are actually fun. I have been enjoying the heck out of them, I gotta say.

Sara: 3:44

Yeah, I really like them. I mean, they're the kind of young adult novel where adults can read them and get stuff from them. Which is not the case for all young adult novels.

Lilly: 3:55

Yeah, they are a little hard for me just because, because I see so much of myself as a young reader in them that I have to remind myself just because I'm dying of shame in this moment does not make the book bad.

Sara: 4:15

I mean, there are some bits in the book where I'm like, yeah, young me would have eaten this up and old me is just kind of rolling my eyes, or older me is just kind of rolling my eyes.

Lilly: 4:28

Yeah, we can, we can get into that in a little more depth later. But there were some really fun references to the main body of Discworld in this book. I feel like more than in the first one.

Sara: 4:40

Yeah, I don't remember actually. There being a lot of subtle references to events in the adult Discworld series in the first book. Whereas with this one, and they are quite subtle, like these are things that I would not necessarily have picked up on or recognized if we hadn't been doing this close reread. Like there's a mention of dragons on the moon, which I think comes from The Last Hero.

Lilly: 5:05

I'm pretty sure, yeah.

Sara: 5:06

Yeah, and I, because I had only read that once before, I don't think I, I noticed that the first time I read A Hatful of Sky. And then there's Granny Weatherwax making vampires crave biscuits and tea, which of course is a reference to Lords and Ladies. And there's also a reference to the title of the next Tiffany Aching book, which, if you haven't read the next Tiffany Aching book, you wouldn't recognize. But the title is I Shall Wear Midnight, which comes from a statement that Tiffany Aching makes in this book.

Lilly: 5:35

It's also, like, a fuckin heavy metal thing to say, and I love it.

Sara: 5:42

It is.

Lilly: 5:43

I feel like there were not these references, I feel. I'm pretty sure that there were not references like this in The We Free Men, the first Tiffany Aking book, because I remember having the distinct sense that it felt very disconnected from Discworld. And these are exactly the kinds of comments that, to me, kind of ties them together in a way that is really enjoyable for someone who has read the main body of Discworld, but would not interfere with the enjoyment of someone who has not.

Sara: 6:15

Yeah, I mean, we did with the We Free Men have a discussion about how you didn't feel that it was a Discworld book at all.

Lilly: 6:22

I was being a little tongue in cheek with that, but yes.

Sara: 6:25

I mean, yes, you, you were.

Lilly: 6:27

Setting wise, not thematically. Yes.

Sara: 6:31

I know that, but we, you're right, we did have that conversation, and I think that this does feel more connected in terms of place, probably also because I mean, the first book takes place primarily in or on the Chalk, which is the area that Tiffany is from that we don't see much in, or at all, in previous Discworld novels. Whereas this book takes place a lot in, it's not named, but it's like the Ramtops and Lanker and very much the area of where Granny Weatherwax is from. And I think that change might also help with that feeling of settling into Discworld. Discworld.

Lilly: 7:10

Yeah. It feels much more interconnected in a way that I really liked. I really liked this book.

Sara: 7:15

It's a good book. I really like the Tiffany Aching books.

Lilly: 7:17

It was really interesting, just, like, from very, from page one. It starts very differently from other Discworld novels. It starts with an excerpt from an encyclopedia entry about the Knack McFeagle. And this is obviously to, like, remind readers of what's going on. But I feel like Pratchett usually plays much more fast and loose with that kind of thing. Like, he'll work in reminders to the prose. But he doesn't usually give you, like, a synopsis of, here's what's happening with these guys.

Sara: 7:50

The story so far, yeah, I kind of feel like that's twofold, or the reason for that is twofold. One, this is a young adult novel, and so it makes sense to me that he puts a little more effort into reminding readers what has gone on in the previous book.

Lilly: 8:07

That was my sense of it, yeah.

Sara: 8:08

And two, this book is also much more of a direct continuation, and all of the Tiffany Aching books are more of a direct continuation of the book that comes before it than a lot of his Discworld novels are.

Lilly: 8:22

I agree completely. I know we have occasionally made the argument that you don't need to read the first book of a miniseries, Mort, to enjoy the rest of them. But for Tiffany Aching, I do not think that at all. Like, you really have to have read The Wee Free Men to get this book, I think.

Sara: 8:41

Yeah, I think the Tiffany Aching miniseries is much more a traditional series than the Discworld novels and the Discworld miniseries tend to be.

Lilly: 8:52

I read the, like, conversation with Pratchett at the back of my copy. I usually don't read that stuff.

Sara: 8:59

I did read it. I'd normally do read that stuff, so.

Lilly: 9:02

He comes out and, like, calls out the miniseries, which feels strangely meta in a way that has no justification at all. But I was just like, oh. No, this is a conversation we have about you, Pratchett. What are you doing? So we see more of the the Knack McFeagle or the Wee Freeman, who are these delightful, strange, Little fairy men who, that was a weird way to describe them. It was an entirely accurate way to describe them.

Sara: 9:34

It was not wrong.

Lilly: 9:38

But they're, they're Pict C's and they live in burial mounds and they're six inches tall and they're always fighting and always drunk and very fun, and I love them very much. But the, the gender dynamics of this group of people is something.

Sara: 9:54

Yeah.

Lilly: 9:55

Part of me feels like I'm taking it too seriously, but also, there's just so much going on. If it was just one thing, I'd probably be able to brush over it, but like, oof.

Sara: 10:06

I mean, I do think that it's something, in the way that there are very few women and their two jobs are to lead the clan and have lots and lots and lots of children. Um.

Lilly: 10:26

Like, Sarah's thousand yard stare, everyone.

Sara: 10:29

Yeah, like, I just, it's,

Lilly: 10:33

cool to have a matrilineal society, but you kind of undercut that when the matrilineal society is, Alright, you're locked up in this room and all you can do is pop out kids.

Sara: 10:45

Yeah. And I think it's also compounded by some of the relationship dynamics that Rob Anybody, who is kind of the main man of the McFegals, has with his new wife Jeannie, who's the Kelda, the the leader.

Lilly: 11:03

She's super jealous of Tiffany, and it's gross.

Sara: 11:06

Yeah, like, so Jeannie was not in the previous book, really.

Lilly: 11:11

She's introduced it like the very

Sara: 11:13

Yeah, she, she comes from a different clan. When the Kelda of a clan dies, a daughter from a different clan comes in and becomes the new Kelda and marries, like, the head man. And for the short period of time, I guess, spoilers for the We Free Men, but if you're listening to this, you probably have already listened to our conversation about the We Free Men, or at least have read the We Free Men, so. At the end of the We Free Men, Tiffany becomes the Kelda, for a hot second, of, like, this clan of MacFiegel, and in order to be Kelda, She has to marry Rob anybody, but they get around it by, like, saying they're engaged and they're going to get married at some very far off point in time. And so Jeannie comes in and she's, like you say, oddly jealous of Tiffany, who is, again, 11 years old in this book, not interested in marriage, like, is just a normal 11 year old girl, more or less. And so that's not a good look, especially when you. Like, add in all of the other gender dynamics in the Knack McFegal.

Lilly: 12:22

Yeah.

Sara: 12:23

And Genie does get better, but like, initially she's like, No, Rob, you can't go and warn Tiffany about this thing that's coming after her. Like, she's a witch, she'll handle it on her own. Which on the face of it is not a terrible statement to make, except that it's,

Lilly: 12:40

Except Rob counters with, She's also a kid.

Sara: 12:44

yeah, Rob counters with that, and also, like, we know that it's coming from a place of jealousy, not thinking that Tiffany can genuinely hold her own.

Lilly: 12:54

Right. Genie is such a sympathetic character. We do get a lot of her Like, internal thoughts about being so isolated, being in this new clan full of strangers that she has to suddenly lead. Like, I feel like there's a lot of really good conversation around that that gets completely ruined by the weird territorial thing against a little kid.

Sara: 13:20

Yep.

Lilly: 13:21

I don't know, she gets better. Like you say, the moment where she's like, Yeah, okay, go warn this child that her life is in danger. I was like, thank you.

Sara: 13:31

Yeah.

Lilly: 13:32

But the fact that that was even a thing was like, come on.

Sara: 13:35

I feel like it's supposed to show a moment of growth in her character, which I guess it does, but it also just, the beginning of it feels so gross because Tiffany is 11, and why are you, as a grown ass woman, being 11 year old, that it just doesn't really work for me.

Lilly: 13:56

I will say though, Tiffany wasn't entirely uninterested in romance. She has a, a very antagonistic flirtation with the Baron's son, who she rescued in the first book. That was, It's absolutely absurd. Their age gap is,

Sara: 14:18

Well, he's 15 and she's 11.

Lilly: 14:21

15!

Sara: 14:22

What 15 year old boy has a crush on an 11 year old?

Lilly: 14:26

It's a little, like, just so absurd. And that is exactly the thing that I was referring to earlier, that when I was like 10 or 11, I would have eaten that up. Like, oh my god, I would have loved that part of this book. Which, yeah. I am so embarrassed about now as an adult that I have to remind myself that it's fine. That does not make this a bad book just because it calls me out.

Sara: 14:54

I think the thing that I love about it is Tiffany doesn't admit to herself that she has a crush on Roland, and this book is all from Tiffany's point of view, but we get a little bit of perspective from some of the comments of some of the Knack McFeagle, and one of them points out that she would spend 25 minutes waiting for Roland to come by so that she can snub him when he comes by.

Lilly: 15:21

That was delightful. This was a very good book. It just brought up some stuff that I gotta work out.

Sara: 15:27

I will say that I really like, and this is a Tiffany Aching series comment, not a comment about this book specifically, but I really like the way that the relationship between Tiffany and Roland plays out over the course of the series. I'm not going to say any more about that, but.

Lilly: 15:49

Yeah, I haven't read this. This is my first time reading the series at all, so please don't.

Sara: 15:54

I know, like, I don't want to say more, but I think it's worth calling out in this discussion because I do really like the way that Pratchett handles that overall as well.

Lilly: 16:07

The other aspect of this book that made me die inside a little bit was how special Tiffany is. She's the bestest. She's the most powerful young witch. She's the only young witch who really gets what magic is. Very, um, I'm the center of the universe, which again, ten year old Lily. Holy shit.

Sara: 16:31

I mean, she suffers from young adult novel main character syndrome.

Lilly: 16:35

She absolutely does. And it's fine for the main character in a young adult novel to have that. And so I, as an adult reading this, need to remind myself. Hey, that's okay. It's okay for little kids to feel special. Just because it's a very cringy thing you did in your youth does not make this bad.

Sara: 16:56

Yeah.

Lilly: 16:57

Was Pratchett too good of an author? Maybe.

Sara: 17:00

I mean, it's almost like he knew what he was doing. thing that I think is interesting about this book is that there's a lot more concrete magic than we normally see in a Discworld novel. With maybe the exception of some of the Rincewind, like, wizard books, because those tend to have some very visible magic, but certainly more magic than we usually see in a witch's novel.

Lilly: 17:27

Yeah, the concrete magic is remarkable. When it shows up in other Discworld novels. Whereas in this one, it feels much more like, well, that's just what magic is. Which is unusual. I

Sara: 17:39

And again, I wonder how much of that is because it's a YA novel. I feel like the theme of magic being a thing that's there but not something you do is a little more adult than young adult.

Lilly: 17:57

think so, too. And even simpler than that, is it just a function of, you gotta keep their attention somehow?

Sara: 18:05

Yeah, that too.

Lilly: 18:06

All of the great overarching commentary on like, what it's like to be a growing up kid is nice and all, but could you give me some fireworks in between the revelations? Thank you.

Sara: 18:17

That is also very true.

Lilly: 18:19

Which, I mean, is also supporting your idea that it's just because it's a young adult novel. I think that's definitely part of it.

Sara: 18:26

Yeah.

Lilly: 18:28

Oh, well, we forgot to discuss who should read this book. I mean, young readers who enjoyed The Wee Freeman. Read this book.

Sara: 18:35

Yeah, I don't think, like we've said, this is not a book where you can come in without having read the first book. So if you haven't read The We Free Men, go and read that, and then come and read this book. But, if you like fantasy, if you like, and I would say this is kind of a coming of age story.

Lilly: 18:51

In a different angle than they usually are. I feel like framing it that way would actually be a little misleading.

Sara: 18:56

Hmm.

Lilly: 18:57

Technically correct, but the wrong vibe.

Sara: 19:00

Okay, maybe, maybe I should say I think it's a coming of age series.

Lilly: 19:04

Okay, okay, that I would believe.

Sara: 19:06

Yeah, because I do think that the series as a whole is Tiffany's journey coming of age. So if you enjoy that kind of fantasy book, then you should read the Tiffany Aching books.

Lilly: 19:21

A couple of weeks ago we had a Patreon drive, one of the rewards of which being a shout out. So thank you, Sherwood, for supporting us and our podcast. Our patrons get access to really fun bonus content, the most recent post being an exclusive episode, a conversation about genre definitions, a follow up from our live stream on that same topic,

Sara: 19:45

We were joined by Crystal Mattar, author of Legacy of the Bright Wash and Legacy of Brick and Bone, and Taylor from Made Between the Pages for this conversation.

Lilly: 19:55

So anyone who supports us on Patreon can go listen to that. I recommend it. It was very fun. We covered a lot more than just genres, I gotta say.

Sara: 20:04

We, it was, it was a wide ranging conversation.

Lilly: 20:13

The remainder of this episode contains spoilers. So I have a very not in the spirit of this book comment.

Sara: 20:27

What is your comment?

Lilly: 20:29

It was very delightful that the Knack McFeagle all, like, stand on each other's shoulders to impersonate a regular human man. And they walk around, and it's very disturbing to the people who see them, of course, because they're rambunctious folk. However, Clive Barker wrote a short story called In the Hills, the Cities, where two cities, the entire populations of them, bind themselves together to create two giants who fight, and it's very visceral. There's a lot of descriptions of, like, the bottoms of the feet being crushed to death as they're walking around.

Sara: 21:08

Oh my.

Lilly: 21:09

It's, I mean, he's a horror author, and that was all I could think of reading those parts, and it kind of, I won't say ruined the magic of it, but I don't think that was the tone Pratchett was going for.

Sara: 21:25

I think that's a very different effect on the reader for a very similar situation.

Lilly: 21:31

Right? It's, it's kind of fun how this exact same concept can be done in such very different ways.

Sara: 21:39

And it's also interesting because the Knack McFeagle who are in those positions, like the feet and the knees, they have comments to that effect, like, oh you're crushing me, you're, you know, this boot smells terribly, things like that, only they're not dying because of it.

Lilly: 21:58

Yeah. The Knack McFeagle on the inside of the giant monster are not being slowly suffocated by the crushing weight of their fellows.

Sara: 22:07

No. They are not.

Lilly: 22:11

That's just my little, uh, weird horror interjection. Thank you everyone for going on that journey with me and we're back. All right, Tiffany aching.

Sara: 22:20

Okay, tiffany aching. So we agreed, I think, that the last book, the first book, was about dealing with grief. What do you think this book is about?

Lilly: 22:30

I mean, it was puberty, right? I know I just argue that it was not a coming of age story, but that's because I think that is more of like a, a trope that has more implication than just being about growing up. Whereas this story very much feels like it's about Dealing with You're changing internal landscape as you go through coming of age, puberty.

Sara: 22:57

Yeah, there's a lot in this book that I think boils down to, like, the struggle of dealing with your mean inner thoughts and how to learn to feel things but not act on them.

Lilly: 23:11

And the idea that just because you feel something doesn't make you a bad person.

Sara: 23:17

Mm hmm.

Lilly: 23:18

That is sort of more at the, at the conclusion of the book, after. So, Tiffany is, uh, kind of possessed, it's not exactly what it is, but it's a good shorthand, by a creature that basically circumvents her natural brain to mouth filter, which you could say maybe is the spirit of puberty, and you wouldn't be wrong. And she has to really struggle with the fact that those were truly her thoughts, but she never would have said them out loud, and There are some really great conversations about how yes, and that control, the part of you that stops you from acting on those impulses or saying those mean things is just as much a part of you as the original impulse. And I thought that was like a really lovely moral of the story, if you will.

Sara: 24:05

Yeah, I agree. And it also gets the point across without feeling preachy. I mean, it's very obvious, like it's hitting you in the face with it.

Lilly: 24:15

It's not subtle, it is not subtextual at all.

Sara: 24:18

Yeah. It's, it's not subtle or subtextual, but it also doesn't feel like it is preaching at you.

Lilly: 24:25

No, it, it felt much more like encouraging. It really gave me the vibe, and I mean, Granny Weatherwax, I think, literally does this in her own way. But the vibe of a parent figure going, Hey kiddo, it's alright, you're okay.

Sara: 24:40

Yes.

Lilly: 24:41

So while it's very obvious, it's much more of a like, comforting, encouraging tone than like a, You kids, you ought to be doing this thing.

Sara: 24:50

I think what I'm trying to get at is it's not patronizing.

Lilly: 24:54

Yeah, yeah. There were some other very unsubtle comments, not as core to the theme of the novel, but some extremely blunt messages, the one that hit me the hardest, or not hit me the hardest, but was like, slapped me in the face the most. Was, everything will turn out okay if you come clean to an adult. While Tiffany is possessed, she steals money from an old man and it's not okay. But she, you know, owns up to it and goes to him to apologize and take responsibility for what she did. And, of course, everything is magically solved.

Sara: 25:38

See, I think for that, for me, my takeaway was not necessarily everything will be okay if you come clean to an adult, but that everything will be okay if you own up to your mistakes.

Lilly: 25:51

Yeah, I, hmm. Except because the problem was solved by, well in this case, the Knack McFeagle, But I would say Granny Weatherwax had a hand in it for encouraging her to, like, make amends. Because it was solved by outside forces, it feels very much like Maybe I'm just taking it too literally, but

Sara: 26:12

I think you're taking it a little too literally. I mean, not to say that your reading is wrong or that it can't be interpreted that way.

Lilly: 26:18

But the message itself is not that specific, yeah.

Sara: 26:21

Yeah.

Lilly: 26:22

Well, and that's maybe just a subset of the wider message that it's okay to let adults take care of you, even if it hurts your pride.

Sara: 26:30

Mm hmm.

Lilly: 26:31

There are a few moments of Tiffany going, I'm 11, why am I the one dealing with this? But then there are also moments where she's like, Hey, it should be my responsibility, but there are people who are going to step up and take care of it for me, and it bothers me, but I'm just gonna, like, let them. And that was a very, like, I have the mental image of the narrator, not Pratchett necessarily, but the, like, narrator, sitting backwards in a chair, like, Hey, kids. You're very competent, and I respect you. But sometimes, you should let the adults take care of things.

Sara: 27:08

Well, and I'm glad that there are times when the adults step in, because as an adult reading this, and this is not something that I cared about as a child, because like, when I was a child, I was like, yes, let the kids take care of stuff, because we're

Lilly: 27:22

Yeah, kids should be the savior of the world. Yeah.

Sara: 27:27

like, okay, but you are literally 11. You should not be responsible for

Lilly: 27:32

Well, okay, my comment was more in the delivery, not a critique of the message.

Sara: 27:37

Right, right.

Lilly: 27:38

was more talking about how very obvious it was.

Sara: 27:41

Yeah.

Lilly: 27:42

I agree completely. It's really nice seeing that in a young adult novel that still absolutely respects Tiffany. She's still very special, as I said in the beginning.

Sara: 27:53

And she's, she's also very competent, and she is the one who solves the problem in the end. Granted, she also causes the problem, but she does end up taking care of it as well.

Lilly: 28:04

But not entirely alone. She lets people help her, and that's really good.

Sara: 28:09

Yeah. And I, I do think that's an important message to get, like, you don't have to do everything on your own.

Lilly: 28:15

In fact, you should not be expected to do everything on your own. Not only do you not have to, it's unacceptable for you to think that everything has to fall on your shoulders.

Sara: 28:25

And even as an adult, I think it's important to accept help when you need it, and to ask for help when you need it.

Lilly: 28:31

Yeah. And I think that loops back to the messages of this book, not feeling, like, preachy, but instead feeling warm and comforting. Paternal, not patronizing, if you will.

Sara: 28:46

Yes.

Lilly: 28:47

And it's funny because I've definitely complained about the overall message of Discworld novels being a little too blunt for my tastes.

Sara: 28:57

You have sometimes complained about that. I don't always agree with you, but you have sometimes complained about that.

Lilly: 29:02

Extremely blunt in this book. Did not bother me at all. And I think it is because in this book, I'm like, Oh, this is a young adult novel. So yeah, lay it out for them.

Sara: 29:12

It makes sense with the, I don't think it's, not Jaune, well, I guess,

Lilly: 29:17

The target age of the audience, the target demographic, if you will,

Sara: 29:22

If you want to hear more of a discussion about is young adult a genre or a demographic, subscribe to our Patreon, because we did talk about that.

Lilly: 29:31

in our genre conversations episode. Yes.

Sara: 29:34

But yeah, I do think that it has to do with the target age range of the novel.

Lilly: 29:39

Okay, the bad guy of this book was very cool, though.

Sara: 29:44

The bad guy. I like the hiver.

Lilly: 29:46

Is that how you pronounce it?

Sara: 29:48

That's how I pronounce it. Is that correct? I don't know.

Lilly: 29:51

I think I said it, like, slightly differently in my head every time the word came up, because I was just, like, trying them out to see what felt good.

Sara: 29:59

I have definitely settled on hiver.

Lilly: 30:01

Yeah, okay,

Sara: 30:03

But again, I don't know if that's right.

Lilly: 30:04

I'm, I'm down to go with that, that's fine. So the Hiver is occasionally compared to a demon, although it's very clearly not, like very explicitly not a demon, that sort of has existed since the beginning of time and has possessed creatures, And then sort of, like, bin too much until they die.

Sara: 30:26

Yes.

Lilly: 30:27

Not that being possessed by the Hiver is, like, unbearable, but the Hiver takes over their identity and then just basically indulges in their every instinct. Just the very first, what do they call it, like, lizard brain? I think they say monkey brain in the book.

Sara: 30:43

I think they say monkey brain, yeah.

Lilly: 30:46

Lizard brain is the colloquialism that I've heard more often, but That like, immediate part of you that makes flash decisions that are not always good.

Sara: 30:56

Yes.

Lilly: 30:57

And so it just indulges in those until it gets too much and the creature or the person perishes. But we find out that the Hiver is doing this because it's terrified and overwhelmed by the expanse of the universe. Like, it can't ignore how big the universe is, it is always aware of how huge and unending and all of the, like, little functions that are going on. It did feel a reference to Hogfather, because we were talking about references to other Discworld books. I think Death makes a comment about how it's incredible that humans have invented boredom when there are so many miracles going on around them. All the time, like photosynthesis.

Sara: 31:40

Hmm.

Lilly: 31:41

I'm pretty sure that's a direct reference. The boredom thing. Anyway. But, because of that, I kind of wondered. Death is having that conversation with the Auditors, who are the sort of ongoing villain in the Death series. And it makes me wonder if the Hiver is like an Auditor gone bad. I guess the Auditors are bad, but like an Auditor gone crazy.

Sara: 32:05

I mean, the auditors don't, for lack of a better word, possess people.

Lilly: 32:09

Right. But that's because they're still auditors. But like, what if one So the auditors kind of cope with the chaos of the universe by trying to control everything, by trying to, uh, keep

Sara: 32:22

Audit it.

Lilly: 32:23

Yeah, audit it. Yeah. No creativity, no unpredictability, you know, do exactly what makes logical sense. Whereas the hiver is sort of coping with it by just trying to be so powerful that nothing can overwhelm it. And they're both like Kind of described as grey, amorphous beings, they both have communal identities. Auditors are always we and us, and the hiver also always talks in a plural first person.

Sara: 32:53

Hiver talks as we and us because the Hiver is an amalgamation of all of the people it has possessed. So it is, you know, the tiger and it is the wizard and it's the empress who killed people by giving her husband scorpion sandwiches. And the, the auditors talk as a collective because they think that individuality is too

Lilly: 33:17

Like indulgent, kind of.

Sara: 33:18

unorderly. Yeah, so I see what you're getting at with there being some similarities between the Hiver and the Auditors, but I don't think they're related at all.

Lilly: 33:28

I don't think so either. It's kind of just my fun conspiracy theory, but I like it.

Sara: 33:34

I mean, you could maybe tell me that they have the same origin point, and that they diverge somewhere down the evolutionary tree, but not that they're, like, directly related.

Lilly: 33:46

I don't know. I could see, like, the, the hivers came to an existence at the dawn of time, right? So maybe this is just what happens to an auditor who's been going nuts for millennia.

Sara: 33:57

But there's so much about the Auditors that, or about the Hiver, that the Auditors can't do. That's true.

Lilly: 34:02

But that's because the auditors follow rules.

Sara: 34:04

Not always, even, even the auditors that we see like go off the rails don't do what the hiver does.

Lilly: 34:09

Don't they possess people in that one

Sara: 34:13

No, they,

Lilly: 34:13

They make their own bodies?

Sara: 34:15

yeah, they make their own body.

Lilly: 34:17

Which book is that? You were gonna say and then I interrupted you.

Sara: 34:19

It's Thief of Time.

Lilly: 34:22

they make their own. Okay, fair enough.

Sara: 34:24

And Lady Jaune or whatever her name is. But yeah, that's, that's not someone who is possessed. That is the auditor like making their own body.

Lilly: 34:33

Fine, it's probably not true, but I like it. Oh, we also see death in this book for a very short minute,

Sara: 34:42

We do see death for a very hot second.

Lilly: 34:45

which also I think helps tie it into Discworld.

Sara: 34:48

I mean, again, and we had this conversation last episode, I felt that it was, last book was also a very, like, Discworld book. I didn't have the same sense of displacement that you did, so.

Lilly: 35:01

Uh, even in, I almost said Tolkien. Whoa, I got my British authors all mixed up. Even in the little, like, interview with him at the end, he's like, Oh, this is basically its own little world. So Pratchett agrees with me.

Sara: 35:13

I mean, he, he said that it was a specific bit of England, yes, which we did know.

Lilly: 35:19

Well, yeah. Anyway. I liked the first one. I liked this one even more. It's a weird experience. Not always. A weird experience reading a young adult novel as an adult. I think it probably means it's a good young adult novel. If it makes me think that hard about my own youth.

Sara: 35:36

Yeah, I didn't read this book as a child because it wasn't out yet, but I did read it as, like, I don't know, as probably an My late teens or early twenties.

Lilly: 35:48

an actual young adult,

Sara: 35:50

yes.

Lilly: 35:52

which ironically is not who young adult books are for.

Sara: 35:55

Yes. For me, it's, I think, less of a experience in the same way that you're having.

Lilly: 36:02

You do have some nostalgia for them, a different kind of nostalgia than you have for a book that you did read as a child. But yeah, I think there is like a very different reaction I'm having reading these books for the first time as a true blue adult, which I hate to say it, but I think I do count as.

Sara: 36:22

I think you do count at this point. Yeah. I'm sorry. Sorry to tell you. But it's funny because the next two Tiffany Aching books, I did not read until last year. So I don't have that nostalgia for them specifically, but I think because I did have it a little bit for Tiffany Aching, like, as a whole, It still kind of gave me that experience, and I'm sure we'll talk about it when we get to those books.

Lilly: 36:48

Yeah, I can't wait. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Sara: 36:58

Come disagree with us! We're on Twitter, Blue Sky, Instagram, and TikTok, at FictionFansPod. You can also email us at FictionFansPod at gmail. com.

Lilly: 37:09

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Sara: 37:17

We also have a Patreon, where you can support us and find exclusive episodes and a lot of other nonsense.

Lilly: 37:23

Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated.

Sara: 37:28

Bye!