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Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
So here's the thing about Discworld that I've noticed: DW is like a Dungeon Master with PCs that keep getting too high-level. Like, you know when you're a DM and your PCs are level 5 and it's totally intense and hardcore and suspenseful when they nearly die breaking out of prison and they're like, that was awesome, I bet it'll be even awesomer as we get higher-level? And then they're level 15 except they're friends with everyone and have a billion powers and multiclass and own the Sword of Smackdown and shit, what can you even throw at them any more, okay here's a minor deity, and even that seems anticlimactic?
Yeah. That's the thing. Sam Vimes had this problem too -- hence Night Watch, a clever solution -- and Tiffany Aching's got it now. It doesn't help that Pterry is way too fond of character connections and she has way too many powerful friends. It's one thing when it's like, Tiffany and Rob vs. the world. It's another when it's like Tiffany and Rob and All-Knowing Jeannie and her Extremely Obedient Feegle Posse and also she's friends with every witch ever? including Granny? and Nanny? plus Esk Smith is helping AND Vimes and Carrot and Angua are friendly to her AND -- okay, what the fuck ARE you going to throw at her now, DM, a demigod?
Which is sort of what happens. Enter the Cunning Man, the witch-obsessed eyeless ghost of McCarthyism past. Which is cool and all -- a poisonous demigod that turns people to suspicion and hate is a creepy concept -- ... except none of Tiffany's friends REALLY succumb to it. Because that would mean having it beat Granny or Nanny or Rob or Jeannie or whatever. So you have the Cunning Man, the Hateful Ghost of Only Possessing Redshirts. Which is really not that menacing. Oh, and Roland, I guess, and that's a nice/creepy bit, but even that's over with really fast, not even Roland can manage to stay possessed by the goddamned Cunning Man.
The end result is, Tiff keeps all her friends, and this villain that only works by making her friendless... can't make her friendless. So the tension dissipates 1/3 of the way through. She leveled up way too high. The book keeps SAYING the Cunning Man's bigger and badder than the Wintersmith, but saying don't make it so, and in this case, it really really don't make it so.
That all makes it sound like I didn't like the book. On the contrary, I really liked the book! On the plane flight I read most of it on I was annoyed I couldn't excerpt quotes for quoting right then and there, and I probably still will, because so much of it is well-written and little touches and scenes and descriptions and dialogue exchanges were so fantastic. In that way it was everything I love about a serious Discworld novel.
Other stuff I was happy with... I always found Roland/Tiffany to be kind of bland and contrived, and was surprised to find the book agreed with me and actually went back on an established/foreshadowed love interest. You never see that in fiction. On the other hand, I totally shipped Preston/Tiffany from Happy Ass Corp Ass and was pleased to see that went there, and really really went there. (I'm not gonna lie, Rob/Tiffany have the most chemistry IMO and Jeannie practically existed just to keep that wrongboat from sailing, but that's neither here nor there.) I kind of wish Roland had gone all the way down the antag road -- he was a good, creepy one when he was one, and it would've helped solve the above Cunning Man problem -- but sigh, no, Letitia had to get a happy ending. (And I liked Letitia, and loved the Tiffany-Letitia friendship, but couldn't she have gotten a Roland-free happy ending? What is so desirable about Roland exactly?)
One thing I always appreciate about Discworld, especially witch books -- effortless passing of the Bechdel test. They just do. You even forget the Bechdel test exists with them, because it'd be impossible to tell the story in any other way. This is why the witch books have probably my favorite SFF female characters ever, and ISWM wasn't any different in that regard. Tiffany's connection with the city witch whose name I've forgotten was great; her encounter with Esk, while giving her another overpowerful friend, was great; everything with Letitia was great and I really liked Letitia. I also appreciate Amber-Jeannie as it prevented Amber from being an overly fridged character for Tiffany's benefit, or at least mitigated it.
The Cunning Man was a cool concept and creepily described -- just not used enough, a bit toothless and declawed. His backstory was wonderfully horrific. The ending was a bit rushed because the Cunning Man simply wasn't used enough; it was like, wait, this story has a villain? Just... dammit, book, why did you lose your plot.
Overall it was good and full of great exchanges and bits and character interactions -- unfortunately, authorial unwillingness to sacrifice any of them for the plot meant the plot really suffered as a result. And that was a pity, because otherwise ISWM really could've been the coolest Tiffany book.
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