#which explains why I Shall Wear Midnight is my favourite of the YAs. though that one I’ve read less often and can’t remember as well

[daisyachain]

I mixed up the order slightly which led to me reading The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky back-to-back after reading Night Watch and Monstrous Regiment back-to-back and that really throws some light on the difference between the Tiffany Aching books and Discworld proper. Even the tighter, most coherent adult novels still have more mess, plot holes, and stray threads than the Tiffany novels, and ironically have a lot more humour.

The Tiffany books are objectively better in that they have tasteful ambiguities and really explicitly nail the ideas they’re trying to get across. Every thread feeds back into the narrative overall. They have room to breathe and each sentence is very, very carefully considered. It makes sense for young adult books to try and communicate more directly because kids may not have the same experience in drawing their own conclusions that an older teen or adult might, and because there’s a didactic throughline in Tiffany that isn’t present in the adult books.

But, sometimes the mess is just more fun than the simple, clean, direct writing

#Kelsey liveblogs discworld #I’m liking the YA books more this time around and yet #it’s just not what I like. it’s not my thing! to hell with perfect neat stories I want big old tangles whose ambition o’erleaps itself #I like the more confused books or the ones that have something to say but don’t know what it is yet #or the ones that get so close to a conclusion but don’t quite make it there and trail off in a series of ‘…’ #which explains why I Shall Wear Midnight is my favourite of the YAs. though that one I’ve read less often and can’t remember as well