A Woman Wizard, Isn't that a Witch? (Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: English Lady

Product:	Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett
Date:	27/06/05 (412 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: puns, lots of puns!, You can see Pratchett enoyed writing it.

Disadvantages: I missed Nanny Ogg and Magrat.

Eskarina Smith received an unusual gift at her birth, the staff of an old, dying wizard. He was under the impression she was the eighth son of an eighth son. She may have the right equipment to be a wizard now, but she hasn’t got the equipment to be a son.

Esk grows up in Bad Ass, in the Ramtop mountains of the Discworld. Granny Weatherwax , the local witch, hides the staff from her, until one day when the wizard magic fills her and even Granny Weatherwax cannot deny it any longer.

Everybody knows that women cannot be wizards, stands to reason doesn’t it? Women are witches; concerned with herbs and births and the complexities of Headology. Wizards deal with numbers and symbols and muck about with the very fabric of the trousers of time.

Esk does have a go at being a witch, she finds most of it is very mundane and has a lot to do with the care of goats and the cultivation of herbs for Granny’s “interesting” potions, cure alls and preventatives. Witching magic just isn’t using up the right kind of magic and Granny realises that if Esk doesn’t get some Wizard training soon, she’ll explode and the terrible things from the dungeon dimensions will take over the world.

The journey to Ankh Morpork and Unseen University is an interesting one, but it is only the beginning. Wizards are a stubborn bunch and it takes a disaster to prove to them that a woman can be wizard material

Terry Pratchett is world renowned for his Discworld series, this is the third of such books and you can see it is one of his earlier novels by his sometimes less than polished style. What is his style? Read Douglas Adams, Piers Anthony or Tom Holt and you’ll see that they’re all very much in the same mould. Kooky worlds, fun with puns and strong, well written characters. Equal Rites is filled with humour and will have anyone chuckling along with the antics of the now well loved Granny Weatherwax and the Wizards.

Granny really starts here, you can see how much fun Pratchett has playing with Granny’s character and it is obvious he loves the character a lot. Esk is a typical, strong minded eight year old girl, the stubbornness of youth is captured beautifully in her and contrast’s and compliments Granny’s years of wisdom and Headology.

Headology is fascinating, Granny is forever making people think what she wants them to think, only wearing her black hat and cloak when visiting the village, looking at them in such a way they don’t even argue. It’s Magic but very practical magic and I think it’s a magic that is present in our world, just explained away as psychology.

This book isn’t necessarily all about Women wining the right to be equal with men, no it is more about the two different sexes coming together and complimenting each other, using their different strengths and talents together to make a better world. I personally think this is a very important message. We shouldn’t be trying to make androgynous people who are neither sex, but rather we should be glorying in the differences of gender and using them equally to all our advantages.

Pratchett is still having fun with the Discworld at this point, some of his later books like “the truth” seem to have a forced feel to them, but you can feel the joy in this one, he enjoyed writing it and it shows in the sparkling, witty narration:

“Granny meanwhile was two streets away. She was also by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just everywhere else that didn’t.”

However it is nowhere near as brilliant as "Hogfather" and "Soul Music" in the storyline department. It is good, but predictable in places.

You can pick up Equal rites from just 5pence plus P&P on the Amazon Market place, paying £4.89 for a brand new copy. Ebay copies start at 20p. This is definitely one worth buying, I’d even pay full price for it, though it is relatively short for a Discworld book. In fact I would say this was a great book for Discworld Virgins to start out on as it is simple, linear and full of Pratchett’s trade mark puns and bucket loads of imagination.

All together now,

“A Wizards staff has a knob on the end…”

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