I Shall Wear Midnight/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: The long, long, long overdue return of Eskarina.
  • Anvilicious: Any witch hunt is an allegory for any other, but Pratchett included an innocent victim who had a book of Klatchian poetry to make sure we Get It.
  • Complete Monster: The trial of one particular convict apparently dragged on for a while, becase the jury kept throwing up. Also the Cunning Man, who in possessing the aforementioned man forces him to kill his pet song bird. And somehow, this is the worst crime of all.
    • See Moral Event Horizon below. The song birds kept by the condemned criminals are symbols of hope and redemption, so killing one is quite literally this. (This being Discworld, where all symbols are real...)
    • And the Cunning Man is an embodiment of lack of forgiveness, and thrives when those he manipulates refuse to acknowledge that witches are human beings. Giving canaries to prisoners is society's acknowledgement that the condemned men aren't beyond human feelings, and the prisoners prove that's true by caring for them. Of course, the Cunning Man would make the convict kill his bird!
  • Die for Our Ship: Would you believe Preston is already getting this?
  • Freud Was Right: The Disc's only female wizard is also the only wizard to realise there's no reason for a staff to have a knob on the end.
  • High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The Cunning Man. He is the personification of blind hate and lynch mobs.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Whether Mr Petty mangaged to crawl back over it or not is up to you.
    • The Cunning Man crosses it in the readers' eyes (in case you didn't realize how bad he was) with the canary. More importantly, that's when he crosses it for Tiffany. It's the reason she accepts that he's beyond redemption, and no longer human enough for her to hesitate about vanquishing.
  • Relationship Sue: You have to wonder a bit about Preston, especially the way he shares Tiffany's obsession with words.
  • The Woobie: Amber.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: You would think the existence of a human girl with kelda abilities would be a big deal, but it has absolutely zero effect on the plot.
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