#two of my fundamental Discworld novels right next to each other

[corporalmaledict]

I'm rereading Discworld books and my god i have missed this world

Reread Monstrous Regiment last week & got hit with gender feels again. Rereading Wee Free Men right now and am going to cry from nostalgia bc its audiobook on long car drives was my intro to Pratchett & the Disc growing up

[creative-type]

Wyrd Sisters and Witches Abroad Review

So I think by now you all know the routine: This year I resolved to diversify my reading and to keep myself accountable I’ve decided to tell all my lovely followers about it. This time around I’m making my first foray into the works of Sir Terry Pratchett, and I enjoyed the first one so much that I read the next of the same series back to back and figured I might as well talk about both at the same time. 

So without further ado, let’s talk about witches

Why I Read These Books

As previously stated, these are the first and so far only books of Terry Pratchett that I’ve ever read. I greatly enjoy fantasy and humor alike so I suppose it was only a matter of time. As for why I started with Wyrd Sisters...all I can say is I like magic, so I thought it would be fun to start with the first witch-centric Discworld novel. 

My Thoughts On Wyrd Sisters

Wyrd Sisters was, in a word, fantastic. It borrows heavily from and relentlessly parodies Shakespeare, particularly Hamlet and Macbeth. I would describe it as a love-letter to the theater, but it also manages to be smart and clever in its own right.

I feel that’s a fine line to tread. I’ve read parodies or retellings that depended too much on their source and fail as an independent work. I think what makes this story so good is the titular wyrd sisters, a triumvirate of witches made up of Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlik (who I misread as Margret until the text explicitly pointed out the misspelling). The way these three characters bounce off of each other is nothing short of comedy gold.

I was pleasantly surprised by how complex the plot turned out being. There are multiple storylines involving the witches, the evil duke and his wife, the Fool, and various theater shenanigans. Death himself makes a few appearances, and at one point there is literally a magical timeskip. For all the laughs, there were moment when Duke Felmont managed to be a genuinely chilling and effective villain.

My favorite humorous exchange had to be when the witches were talking to the king’s ghost about the whereabouts of his infant son

“What kind of people?” said the king. “Not commoners, I trust?”

“Absolutely not,” said Granny with considerable firmness as a vision of Vitoller  floated across her imagination. “Not common at all. Very uncommon. Er.”

Her eyes implored Magrat for help.

“They were Thespians,” said Magrat firmly, her voice radiating such approval that the king found himself nodding automatically.

“Oh,” he said. “Good

“Where they?” whispered Nanny Ogg. “They didn’t look it.”

“Don’t show your ignorance, Gytha Ogg,” sniffed Granny. She turned back to the ghost of the king. “Sorry about that, your majesty. It’s just her showing off. She don’t even know where Thespia is.”

Which brings me to perhaps the most unexpected pleasure of all: The fact that the witches, while intelligent, weren’t educated. It added a certain down to earth quality that I have a hard time putting into words but really enjoyed. The witches employ a certain home-spun wisdom, with Granny Weatherwax especially being fond of using “headology” instead of magic. It was a unique perspective Pratchett was able to use to really bring home one of the sub-themes of the book, and that was the power words and entertainment have on the world.

“Granny had never had much time for words.  They were so insubstantial.  Now she wished that she had found the time.  Words were indeed insubstantial.  They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.”

“Granny subsided into unaccustomed, trouble silence, and tried to listen to the prologue.  The theatre worried her.  It had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her to control.  It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were.  And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people.  It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules.  They altered the world because it sounded better.”

 But enough of me gushing. Let’s move on to the next one.

My Thoughts on Witches Abroad

My thoughts on Witches Abroad are more complicated than that of Wyrd Sisters. While my only knowledge of Shakespeare is limited to what was forced upon me in highschool, I have a deep love for story conventions and storytelling in general, which is what this book deconstructs. Hard. 

There are individual pieces that I found just as funny (if not moreso) than the previous book, and the scene deconstructing Little Red Riding Hood was absolutely gut-wrenching. I can’t fathom how Pratchett got the idea to combine the idea of Disney World and Mardi Gras into one setting, but it works surprisingly well. 

On the other hand, there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on that kept me from enjoying it as much as Wyrd Sisters, and I think part of it is because I have a fundamentally different worldview than the author, and he reaches philosophical conclusions that I just don’t agree with.

I also think the pacing in this one’s a little wonky. I enjoyed all of the one-shot fairy tale references in the first half, but collectively it’s quite a lot of time spent not going anywhere, while the second half could have stood to be fleshed out a little bit more for my tastes. 

The final climax though...Never have the words “this one” been more powerful.

All in all, I think the highs of Witches Abroad were higher, but it’s lows were definitely lower. Wyrd Sisters was the more consistently good of the two books.

In Conclusion

There’s a reason Terry Pratchett is as beloved as he is. I’ve read two of his books and can already tell why he’s so highly regarded as an author. Even though I didn’t enjoy Witches Abroad as much as Wyrd Sisters I still thought it was a fun romp with something to say about itself (even though I didn’t agree with what it was saying). 

It’s always interesting to read an author who has different views than yourself. In this case I found that I couldn’t really separate the author’s thoughts from my feelings on the story because the books were written in such a way where they were inseparably intertwined with one another.

I’ll probably read more of Pratchett’s works in the future, and if these two books are any indication I’ll probably enjoy them immensely, but I won’t deny that there were reasons that kept me from enjoying them as much as other people do.