Only light spoilers ahead…

Terry Pratchett’s The Shepherd’s Crown isn’t wrapped like the neat little bow one might expect at the end of a long-running fantasy series. It’s more like the last cup of tea Granny Weatherwax didn’t quite finish—still warm, still with a bit of strength, but missing the hand that always knew exactly how long to steep it. But maybe that’s the point.

As his final book before Pratchett’s passing, The Shepherd’s Crown is unfinished. But it’s not in a rough-draft, what-the-hell-is-this kind of way. But you can feel where Pratchett might’ve fleshed something out more, lingered longer on a laugh or heartbreak. Instead, he just gives it to us straight, like Nanny Ogg with a hangover and no time for nonsense.

Despite its rawness — or perhaps because of it — The Shepherd’s Crown is quietly devastating and weirdly hopeful. It opens with loss, and ends with a hut built by hand. In between, there’s everything you’d want in a Tiffany Aching book: birth, death, goat herding, elf-stabbing, and gender role obliteration.

Granny Weatherwax dies quite early in the story, something you’d expect to come towards the end. It’s jarring, but Pratchett doesn’t waste time with sentimentality. “For a witch stands on the very edge of everything,” he writes. The baton is passed to Tiffany, and it’s heavy—she doesn’t get a training montage or a pep talk. She gets responsibility, unreasonable expectations, and a rival witch who’s basically Karen in a pointy hat. This is what sets this story in motion.

Tiffany’s arc is all about stepping into big shoes—Granny’s, yes, but also her own. She fumbles, rages, saves a baby, yells at idiot noblemen, and sets elves on fire. Her relationship with Geoffrey, the pacifist goat-whisperer from a noble family who doesn’t fit in a “boy” box any more than Tiffany fits in a “nice girl” one, is one of the book’s greatest treasures. Together, they hint at the future Discworld that could’ve been, had Pratchett lived to write it.

Meanwhile, the elves of Fairy Land are still jerks: glamorous, manipulative, thin-skinned little sociopaths. Peaseblossom is the worst of them—a sadistic twink with a flair for the dramatic—and Nightshade, the once-Queen, is almost sympathetic, in an “if she only had a friend” sort of way. Her scenes with Tiffany are some of the most fascinating for me in the book, blurring lines between enemy and ally, monster and maybe-something-more.

Yes, the pacing is off. Clearly, the plot sometimes leans too hard on Discworld Greatest Hits, which is a bit off-putting for someone new to the series. But if you came for a polished fantasy finale, you’re reading the wrong author. Pratchett’s always been more interested in people—especially the ones overlooked, underestimated, or just too damn stubborn to quit. This book is full of them, and that focus on character is what drew me to his work in the first place.

The message of this book, despite its shortcomings, is loud and clear. Gender roles are dumb. Elves are worse. Hard work isn’t glamorous, but it matters. When the world knocks you down, you grab your Shepherd’s Crown (literal or metaphorical) and stand back up, because there’s always something that needs doing.

It’s not Pratchett’s best book, by far. Is it his most important? Maybe for some people, including myself as it’s the first one I read. It’s certainly his most personal, especially as he knew it was his farewell, a torch-passing of sorts. The ending reminds u that magic doesn’t have to sparkle to be real. Sometimes it just looks like building a hut with your own two hands while a cat named You watches approvingly. That’s kind of the point, and it brings tears to my eyes to know this was the end.

If there’s something I took away from this book, it’s that Pratchett saw the world crumbling, and this was his hopeful message. It’s that people just need to do what’s needed, not what is nice. And, of course, the biggest lesson of all, is to leave the world a bit better than you found it. As for why I started at the end, it was so everything else that came before looks even better as it comes along. One down, forty Discworld series books to go.

~ Amelia Desertsong