It's funny how PTerry basically writes Tehanu three years before Le Guin. That's not the only funny thing about it, but it still feels like a little step back after The Light Fantastic as he starts to rejig the whole Discworld to be about more than one bumbling wizard, so there's a lot of scaffolding in this story to support a plot that's... nice and probably necessary but not exactly surprising. But this walked so better books could run, and at least it walks fairly confidently now.