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    The Wee Free Men
    The Wee Free Men
    The Wee Free Men
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Wee Free Men

    Written by Terry Pratchett

    Narrated by Stephen Briggs

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults * ALA Notable Children's Book * Horn Book Fanfare Book * Kirkus Reviews Editor’s Choice * SLJ Best Book of the Year 

    By the beloved and bestselling grandmaster of fantasy, Sir Terry Pratchett, this is the first in a series of Discworld novels starring the young witch Tiffany Aching.

    A nightmarish danger threatens from the other side of reality. . . .

    Armed with only a frying pan and her common sense, young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching must defend her home against the monsters of Fairyland. Luckily she has some very unusual help: the local Nac Mac Feegle—aka the Wee Free Men—a clan of fierce, sheep-stealing, sword-wielding, six-inch-high blue men.

    Together they must face headless horsemen, ferocious grimhounds, terrifying dreams come true, and ultimately the sinister Queen of the Elves herself. . . .

    The five funny and fabulous Tiffany Aching adventures are:

    • The Wee Free Men
    • A Hat Full of Sky
    • Wintersmith
    • I Shall Wear Midnight
    • The Shepherd’s Crown

    Tiffany’s mentors, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, star in the novels Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, and Carpe Jugulum. 

    And don’t miss Terry Pratchett’s hilarious and wise Discworld novel The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, winner of the Carnegie Medal! 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateDec 14, 2004
    ISBN9780060824556
    Author

    Terry Pratchett

    Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.

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    Reviews for The Wee Free Men

    4.5/5

    502 ratings153 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Terry Pratchett was and will always be a law-unto-himself and cannot possibly be defined, categorized, or compared to other authors. This is the first (audio)book featuring Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mag Feegles, and G_d thanks there is an entire series to read and listen to. Narrator Stephen Briggs' rendition and delivery of the story is just right and his ability to find the right tone makes this an all-time-favorite!
    • 4/5
      This was a cute book, very imaginitive. There were many parts that made me laugh, but I felt that it dragged on a bit towards the end. Overall the story was entertaining,but I feel that this is one YA book that is bettter for children (as an adult it wasn't all that great, although if I had read it 15 years ago I probably would have loved it) Tiffany is a young girl with an annoying baby brother. Her life becomes a new adventure when she meets a witch, finds out she is also a witch, and her brother goes missing. Tiffany has to change the way she sees things in order to save him.
    • 5/5
      Tiffany is a wonderful sympathetic character in this fun fantasy coming of age story. Quirky, funny, and clever, Pratchett's Discworld comes alive with the voice of Briggs as narrator in the audiobook version. A fun read for young and old alive and sure to have you chuckling and cheering Tiffany on!
    • 4/5
      I really like dhow this book could tell in the same time that all the bizarre and in lack of better word magical things you experience are real (so you can learn magic and be a witch that way) and also how practical things and lgoical thinking can make you a witch. It's not less magical because you know how it's made. Great advice and adventorous story.
    • 5/5
      A new witch is born in the Discworld as Tiffany Aching comes into her own by making friends with the Nac Mac Feegle, crossing over into the world of faerie to save her brother from the snow queen, and learns to open her eyes and then open them again. It's enough even to impress the likes of Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax. I'm now something like thirty books into the Discworld series and can finally say that I've turned the corner from just fair-to-middlin' enjoying them to actively loving them. Pratchett has hit a stride with these last few books that really works and I hope it continues for the next ten or eleven books.
    • 5/5
      I waited a long time to read this book. I love Terry Pratchett and I thought . . . "A children's book I shant like it! He'll have to simplify!" But I was wrong, silly me I should have known better. If you already like Terry Pratchett there is nothing not to like here. If you are new to Terry Pratchett and Discworld, this isn't a bad place to start. You wont be too confused and you'll get in on the fun. Plus, if you don't like the wee free men your crazy! My inner monologue has not yet recovered. Crivens!
    • 4/5
      Fun! I read some of the first Discworld novels (The Colour of Magic, I think) and kind of burned out on them. It's been a good many years since I read a Pratchett, but this one pulled me right in. The Nac Mac Feegle are...amusing, and annoying, and occasionally very rich. Tiffany is fascinating, as she figures out her talents (most of which are very prosaic...except when they aren't). The Queen, and the dromes, are weird and wonderful - I like the drome that gets lost in the sea-dream, it's neat. Tiffany also lays a foundation for her future, with Roland - if he remembers matters correctly (no, I do not mean romance!). I want to read the next one, but given my previous experience, I'm going to wait a little while before I start the next.
    • 3/5
      It's nearly ten years since I first discovered (rather late) Terry Pratchett, when a niece left behind a copy of one of his early books. I loved his quirky humour and almost sci-fi take on reality, but after reading two or three more Pratchetts a started to want something fresher. Now, I've discovered a new way to read Pratchett. In small doses. I really enjoyed coming back again to this book. He's such an easy read. There's plenty of action. There's darkness, but it's hardly horror. And there is that wonderful way with words that makes me think he's winking as he trots out another play on words. I'm sure I'll be reading more of his vast library as an occasional dip into simple enjoyment.
    • 5/5
      Tiffany Aching has spent her whole life in Chalk, under the wise tutelage of her grandmother, a revered shepherdess and possible witch - so when strange things start happening, Tiffany is determined to protect her home with the help of the Wee Free Men.

      Although set in Discworld - and later, familiar faces popping up, such as Granny Weatherwax and everybody's favorite, Death - the Tiffany Aching series was written as young adult. It doesn't quite have the same laugh-out-loud humor as the best of Discworld, but makes up for it with the other things Terry Pratchett does so well (which is, of course, everything).

      Tiffany is perfect: precocious, inquisitive, a bit of a know-it-all, and with just enough common sense and petulant child to make her believable. She isn't the Tragic Heroine Who Stands Against All Odds that make up so many young adult novels, or even the Mostly Smart Heroine Because Everyone Says She Is But Someone Manages to Be an Idiot for the Entire Plot that makes up the other ones. She is, instead, a bright kid with a good head on her shoulders, but not a lot of experience.

      The Nac Mac Feegles are laugh-out-loud hilarious (based on the Celts, including dying their skin blue with woad, they will pick a fight with anything and anyone and are deeply suspicious of the written word, witches, and lawyers), and the imagination of Pratchett soars. His main gift, however, is by making the plot utterly imaginative and crafting the resolution to make sense within it - which sounds simple enough, or at least something they surely teach writers, but most usually take wild imagination to mean that a completely improbable coincidence will crop up and save the day at the last minute.

      If you're a fan of Discworld, you will love it. And if you haven't read Discworld, this will make you want to pick up some more Pratchett.
    • 5/5
      wailywailywaily I am already at the end.
      the wee free men and Tiff are among my absolute favourite characters of Sir Pratchetts. an xlnt book to start your own journey in the world of his magic.
      Steven Briggs makes the listening even better than reading the book.
      Confession, I own all books written by Sir TP. they are much loved, worn and frayd. Never thought there were narrators to do them justice. happy to have been proven wrong. both Steven Briggs and Nigel Planar are totally perfect.
      now I must offski.
      //L , Sweden
    • 4/5
      Slow start, but once the trip into the dreamlands starts the story grips you and never lets up until right at the end
    • 4/5
      Lots of fun. Some brilliant laugh out loud moments.
    • 5/5
      Of all the Discworld books I've read, and admittedly there haven't been that many, this has got to be my favorite. I knew it was going to be a great book as soon as the protagonist walloped Jenny Green Teeth in the face with a frying pan. And I'm not sure it's possible to read this book and not love the Nac Mac Feegle.I don't actually have anything bad to say about this book, so I think I'll stop the gushing there. Suffice it to say, it was fantastic and I highly recommend it.
    • 5/5
      Best book ever!!! This is my first Terry Pratchett book and all I can say is, what took me so long?? This was such a fun read with such perfect writing that I would have to continually stop and read a part out loud because I just had to share it-can't wait to read the next one (and the next one and the next one...the fourth and final book in the wee free men series just came out=)
    • 4/5
      Funny and charming
    • 4/5
      I am not a big fan of fantasy. Maybe this isn't even considered fantasy, but The Wee Free Men was so much fun, I'm sure I'm going to read it again someday. Tiffany is a witch on a quest to get her little brother back from the Queen of the Fairies who kidnapped him. She uses her gifts (First Thoughts, Second Thoughts) to overcome obstacles along the way. She has the help of "The Wee Free Men", a group of tiny, hilarious, beings who enjoy fighting and drinking among other things. In fact, if there's nobody to fight, they'll fight among themselves, just to keep in practice. There were so many things in this book that made me laugh out loud, including the names of many of the characters. (Rob Anybody was one of my favorites.) I read it because my husband was adamant that I'd enjoy it and I DID! A whole lot of fun.
    • 5/5
      I wished I’d heard this before hat full of sky.
    • 3/5
      I picked this after reading Wintersmith. I enjoyed it, it was a fairly quick read. Wintersmith is actually better.
    • 4/5
      The Wee Free Men is one of several novels (Carpet People, Truckers, Wings, Diggers, A Hatful of Sky, I Shall Wear Midnight, Maskerade) where this author returns to his tiny person fixation (he said this was inspired by T.H. White’s book Miss Masham’s Repose, in which a colony of Lilliputians is discovered in someone’s garden). They’re just like homo sapiens every time but their physical form has been greatly scaled down and their personalities have been outrageously scaled-up. In Wee Free Men, the little folk (Nac Mac Feegles) are miniature Glaswegian bandits, who serve on the apron strings of their female Kelda. They make friends with a trainee witch and then have to combat big, bad problems, which they do so with a blithe disrespect for safety and personal property. Unlike Rowling’s indoor wizard school, the educational environment for trainee witches appears to be the open countryside. As with many other Pratchett books, there has to be something nasty for them to face or you wouldn’t be able to see them be tested and how they deal with emotions like loss. There’s also the sense of our world of knowledge and control being very small and always surrounded by this huge background of fuzzy chaos and the unknown, always trying to pop something malign into our realm which someone odd and special (in alliance with uniquely talented and amusingly irresponsible friends) is going to have to deal with. This is a good book but the stereotypes might be funny to some readers and insulting to others (I thought funny, but you never know) and the author seemed unable to move on from the idea of small slapstick people bumping into each other like the Time Bandits.
    • 5/5
      The Labirynth shot out was awesome. Just imagine the Wee free men in evening suits and bow ties... In general, this is awesome, screws up all the fairy-tale ideas of faeries and makes you laugh to death. Plus, the Chalk was probably inspired by the British South-West (the white horse is in Uffington near Swindon), near where I'm living, which makes it even more awesome
    • 5/5
      If you haven't read Terry Pratchett, you're missing out--he's one of the most humorous, creative, and profound fantasy writers I've come across. This book is a nice, self-contained story about a young girl, Tiffany Aching, who lives out in the countryside in Pratchett's fantasy world, the Discworld. The story itself is about faeries, but not exactly twinkly sparkly happy faeries.
      Tiffany Aching is intensely curious and loves to both think and question everything around her, including the simple fairy stories she has been told. It's an issue that has come up in her village. Ever since the Baron's son disappeared while hunting in the woods, everyone has been (violently) opposed to any form of magic. But Tiffany can't help but wonder: why are the witches considered the evil ones? After all, Hansel and Gretel were busy destroying and vandalizing the poor woman's home, and why would she even have an oven that large? She decides that she wants to be in a fairy tale, but that she wants to be the witch rather than the vapid princess.
      But even as Tiffany is coming to her own conclusions, she is forced to step up and take action. Something is stirring in the land of fairy. When her rather unloveable baby brother is taken by the Fairy Queen, Tiffany decides to fight back. Armed only with a frying pan (cold iron!) and advised only by a talking toad and a bunch of wode-painted, Scots-speaking, cheerfully homicidal Pictsies who call themselves the Wee Free Men, Tiffany must venture into fairyland, where all her dreams might come true...and would you like to be in a place where your nightmares can become corporeal?
      The story weaves together elements from old Celtic legends and Scottish folk ballads, most memorably, Tam Lin, The Wee Wee Man, and Childe Roland--especially Tam Lin. Tiffany is a strong, intelligent, and sympathetic lead, and the story itself is the antidote to "believe in true love" or "wish upon a star" style fantasy.
      To quote the book: "If you trust in yourself...and believe in your dreams...and follow your star...you’ll still be beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”
    • 5/5
      Tiffany Aching wants to be a witch when she grows up - but in the meantime she puts her incipient skills to good use rescuing her small and very sticky brother from the clutches of The Queen, aided only by a toad, a frying pan and a band of tiny, blue-skinned barbarian pictsies.I wasn't sure whether I'd like the Tiffany Aching books, given that I don't read a lot of YA lit. Beyond the fact that the main protagonists (well, the human ones) are children and the relative simplicity of the verbal puns, there's not a lot of difference between this and the adult Discworld books.Tiffany is an excellent character whose self-awareness grows a lot through the course of the book. I adored the Nac Mac Feegle, who hurtle with riotous abandon through the pages leaving chaos (but nothing that isn't nailed down) being them.This is a gloriously effervescent story, which has me really looking forward to A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith.
    • 5/5
      A lovely story of a young girl coming to grips with the Discworld reality. Highly recommended if you like fantasy and witchery.
    • 4/5
      This book is too much fun. It's also the first real Terry Pratchett but I didn't need to know a thing about his previous books to read this. My favorite part is the setting -- a small town in... Scotland? Northern England? Made-upland? Not sure. But it's cool, because it's about a daughter and her relationship with her grandmother, the town "might-be-a-witch-not-sure-I'm-not-gonna-ask", one of the many shepherds. I love everything Pratchett says about shepherding, like burying one with a piece of wool to let God know that this was a shepherd and maybe didn't go to church every Sunday because when sheep give birth, you gotta be there for that.And the funny thing is the titular "wee free men" are only in about half the book (but scattered throughout). And they're hilarious too. They speak in thick Scottish accents and love drinkin', fightin', and stealin'. And they swear fealty to a little girl who's a smart cookie due to trading vegetables for lessons at the local bazaar. My only beef is the last part, where the final battle with Generic Queen Witch drags on for quite a few chapters. It bobbles back and forth between "is it a dream or isn't?" and repeats the same tension. Not to mention that the bad queen has no strong beef with the protagonist, so the dramatic conflict has nothing invested in it.
    • 5/5
      I liked this a lot, but then I would have been surprised if I hadn't. It's Pratchett, after all. Although it is a Discworld book, it didn't really feel Discworldish to me, and I can't really explain why. I had the same feeling with The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. It's not just that it's mostly cut-off from other Discworld locations and characters... Anyway, it's a fun book and I'm looking forward to reading the rest in the series.
    • 5/5
      Oct 11, 2003

      Tiffany Aching is a most unusual kind of witch, and a marvelous kind of hero. I love the way Pratchett writes her thinking. Perhaps the Wee Free Men are a stereotype of Scots, but they enchant me.

      ***

      How did I forget Ratbag and his encounter with the Nac Mac Feegle? Or the description of him as almost liquid, settling out in a puddle whenever he rests on a horizontal surface? Because that's Calder.

      Library copy, because I didn't want to lug about the big illustrated one.
    • 4/5
      Great fun, and made me giggle! Ach! Crivens!
    • 4/5
      This is the first of five books in one of my favourite Terry Pratchett series so far. Tiffany Aching, is a nine-year-old girl growing up in the Chalk district of Discworld who admired her granny and wants to be just like her. However, she never realised that Granny Aching was a witch, as witches aren't the openly powerful and evil creatures people have assumed they are. While fighting off Fairyland monsters, Tiffany runs into the Nac Mac Feegles (or as they call themselves, the Wee Free Men) and lots of fun and crazy adventures ensue.
      With just the help of a magical toad and the Wee Free Men, she must take on the wicked Queen from Fairyland and rescue her annoying little brother.
      Tiffany grows as a character in this story and it is amusing to see how down to earth and logical these witches are.
    • 2/5
      TIffany wants to be a witch like her grandmother. Her brother is stolen by the Queen and she has to free him with the help of the wee free men. The book has a great premise, however, it does not really deliver.
    • 5/5
      Don't be fooled by the Young Adult designation of the Tiffany Aching stories; adults will laugh just as loudly. This is followed by A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith.