Age 11+

The moral of Terry Pratchett’s latest children’s novel is: never give in to the impulse to join in a morris dance. When trainee witch Tiffany Aching, familiar from The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky, does just that, the wintersmith — the force that makes winter — falls in love with her. Which makes for some impressive romantic gestures, such as snowflakes in her image. It does, however, mess up the climate no end.

Sorting it out takes Tiffany’s sworn protectors, the stereotypically boozy, belligerent Scottish midgets the Nac Mac Feegles, into the Underworld — or rather into Limbo, so-called because the doors are low. Pratchett’s one-liners, the comic dialogue of the Feegles, the satire about teenagers and the credulousness of ordinary folk, and the reworking of the Orpheus myth, make for a characteristically entertaining mix. This novel may not be Pratchett's most philosophically complex, nor the one with the cleverest plot, but its skilful whimsy is given substance by its timeless theme of seasonal change, and as the Feegles say: “Ye cannae fight a story as old as that”.

WINTERSMITH by Terry Pratchett

(Doubleday £14.99)

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