Equal Rites For Witches (Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett
Date:	23/11/01 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see review

Disadvantages: see review

It probably wasn’t to be long before someone noticed that magic and the utilisation of magic in the fantasy genre is someone one sided when we look at the sex of those who use it. Wizards are ultimately all powerful, often omnipotent beings whereas women are generally given to witchery with the most powerful ability to impose warts upon an aggressor backside. It would take someone like Terry Pratchett to realise this and then to produce an entire novel satirising this too.

Equal Rites begins with an ageing wizard on a quest to pass on his staff of power so that his line in wizardry can be carried on. He is looking for the eighth son of an eighth son(all wizards must be this) and finds one in some backwoods snow swept village high up in the mountains, a son who hasn’t yet been born...and who they find out just a little too late is indeed not a son at all but a daughter...

The Discworld’s first female wizard s here and comes into a profession which is about as willing to accept her as Cardinal College would a woman. Still, Esk’s powers are undoubted and instead she is taken in by Granny Weatherwax and taught the art of witchcraft - all ‘Headology’ as she calls it, but with an interesting ability to be able to transmit ones self into the mind of other sentient beings like birds etc. All of this builds up to the predictable showdown been magical entities and the even more predictable saving the day by Esk.

Equal Rites presents a more serious novel from Terry Pratchett which actually incorporates a number of fantasy elements without ripping into them in the jokey manner seen in the previous two novels. Of course, the humour is still here and it is till funny in parts, but it is not the riotous affair seen in those other two books. Rather here we have a real plot as opposed to a collection of interlinked incidents but less laugh out loud moments. I am not a huge fan of this novel but it does present a more acc
omplished author performance and gives a taste of what is later to come - but to be done better. That is not to say that this isn’t funny and that there isn’t the expected Pratchett anarchic humour here, because there is - just less of it. Personally I can’t say that this is one of my favourites in the series, and in fact, I wasn’t all that enamoured with any of those in the ‘witches’ sub-series but its still worth the read and I guarantee you’ll get a few giggles out of it. Its very easy reading anyway so you’ll probably finish it in one sitting, Pratchett’s very unique unpretentious style seeks to tell you a story and throw a number of gags in whilst doing so rather than try to impress you with his grip of the English language.

Its light reading, its fun reading, and its the kind of book you’ll pick up and find impossible to put down...but its also not one of his best...and you should really read the two previous novels to appreciate it fully, although this is one of the most ‘standalone’ in the whole series so it is not entirely necessary here.

Summary: