Last month saw the extinction of the Western Black Rhino. At the last count, there are only four Northern White Rhino left in the World. A strange start to a book review, but with an underlying point: Some things have been around for so long that we simply don’t make a fuss of them any more. We take them for granted, until they are gone. There will always be lions, tigers, rhino and another new novel by Pratchett. Won't there?

Last month saw the extinction of the Western Black Rhino. At the last count, there are only four Northern White Rhino left in the World. A strange start to a book review, but with an underlying point: Some things have been around for so long that we simply don’t make a fuss of them any more. We take them for granted, until they are gone. There will always be lions, tigers, rhino and another new novel by Pratchett. Won't there?

This year’s Terry Pratchett ‘witches’ book is everything the returning readers expect. Consistently well written, predictably imaginative, an ensnaring tale of cruel morality in a poor, but hardworking, society where people are valued for what they can do. Without fuss, it will quietly slide off the shelves and into the best-seller lists, reliable and dependable as the other 41 million copies before it.

When Terry Pratchett was hospitalised earlier this year, it was a grim reminder that even the most solid bits of clockwork sometimes lose a cog. Although this turned out to be only a temporary crop of gravel in the oil of the great publishing machine, it does bring a moment of reflection.

Wintersmith once more features the teenaged protagonist Tiffany Aching, a trainee-witch, vetinarian and rather proficient cheese maker. With a wisdom beyond her years and followed by her familiars the Nac Mac Feegles, Tiffany always gives her monsters a good drubbing. The series is likely to conclude in next year’s novel I Shall Wear Midnight, in which she eventually, unstoppably, qualifies.

In the meantime, she is placed under the experienced care of a weird old lady whom none of the other apprentices would touch with someone else’s broomstick. Tiffany quickly realises that if anything is too weird, it’s probably just theatre. People are trusted more in their jobs if they have the right uniform, the right kind of equipment. For a witch, that’s probably bones from a mail-order joke shop, but if it does the trick…

It isn’t long before the heroine bundles headlong into her latest supernatural entanglement. The Black Morris is a sort of anti-morris dance which secretively closes down a summer which the better known kind of morris heralds. It has to happen, or the seasons do not turn. Yes, I know it defies reason, but it says here that morris dances have to happen.

Tiffany finds herself drawn into the dance and hence to the attention of the primal elemental force known as The Wintersmith. Sometimes it’s best not to intrigue someone who’s balancing a dozen spinning bottles, since the mess takes some getting used to. Of course, as the Feegles follow her (a tribe of unruly ‘pictsies’ who believe they have died in another world and come here), there’s a good chance the bottles will be stolen before they hit the ground. Apparently, in the underworld, they’re still finding them.

For me, there is a highlight to this book. A splendid conceit. Picture wagons, heavily loaded with stacks and stacks of books and drawn into a defensive circle. In the icy blast of a frozen moorland, a group of bewildered travelling librarians are gathered around their fading fire wondering if there is, indeed, anything left to burn.

Another Pratchett then. Not topical or shocking. Just consistent, reliable, and written for a society where authors, as entertainers, are valued for what they can do.

Adam Corres