Equal Rites: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett (MOBI)

Description

Terry Pratchett’s profoundly irreverent, bestselling novels have garnered him a revered position in the halls of parody next to the likes of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen.In Equal Rites, a dying wizard tries to pass on his powers to an eighth son of an eighth son, who is just at that moment being born. The fact that the son is actually a daughter is discovered just a little too late.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I have read this book many times and each time I discover a new facet. Strong female characters show their struggle and bumbling wizards show how silly they can be. I buy this as a gift to get friends into the world of Sir Terry Pratchett.

⭐Loved this, and will be reading the whole series now.

⭐Terry Pratchett is probably my favorite author – he takes you on a journey into the magic of “disc-world” with its witches, wizards, villains, thieves, assassins, trolls, dwarfs, Gods, orangutans and the occasional ordinary folk – all with a range of cultures and beliefs. Yet all his characters are people that you have almost certainly met in your life – with analogies that sparkle with his humor and that fire your imagination. Equal rites explores the comic biases we all have when a young girl is accidentally born to become a wizard and includes my favorite character of all – but let me not spoil it for you.

⭐Old Granny Weatherwax usually succeeds at whatever task she sets for herself. However the local blacksmith has sired the eighth daughter of an eighth son (himself). A dying wizard staggers into the smithy and bequeaths his staff to a baby who he assumes to be an eighth son of an eighth son.Right count. Wrong sex.Granny tries to rectify the matter by destroying the staff, but it indignantly refuses to be destroyed either by force or by witchcraft. Finally she hides it in the smithy and life returns to normal in the little Ramtop mountain village of Bad Ass–at least until Eskarina is seven.As Pratchett puts it, “Magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass.” When young Eskarina sasses her father in the smithy, he slaps her, and then is knocked cold by the suddenly active staff.Granny realizes that the wizard’s magic had taken hold of Eskarina after all. Still, she’s a stubborn old woman with an unshakeable moral center. Wizard’s magic is not for females, but who’s to say Eskarina can’t be trained up as a witch?Thus begins one of the funniest apprenticeships in fantasy. Eskarina and Granny Weatherwax both have firm ideas on what a witch should and should not do. Granny wants to teach ‘headology’ to Esk, who scorns any technique that doesn’t involve flashes of light and/or bad smells. She wants to learn ‘real’ magic.After a near-death experience with a magical technique called ‘borrowing’ Granny finally girds up her many layers of flannelette and sets off for the Unseen University with her subdued (but not for long) apprentice. Maybe the wizards can teach Esk how to control her wild magic before it destroys her, and maybe Discworld along with her.There is a musty old rule barring females from the Unseen University, but how long is that going to stop a determined Esk (“Why is that little girl squinting at me?”) and an even more determined Granny Weatherwax?The witches of Ramtop Mountains are my favorite Discworld characters. I’m surprised no one has yet published “The Wit and Wisdom of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.” They answer all of the important questions of philosophy while getting clobbered by falling houses, chastening fairy godmothers, dueling with assorted wizards, fairies, and vampires, and generally restoring peace to the little villages of the Ramtops, Bad Ass included. They are the moral bedrock (in Nanny Ogg’s case, moral ‘bedspring’) of Pratchett’s sane and funny philosophy of life.If you’d like to read the Discworld witch books in order of publication, they are: “Equal Rites” (1987), “Wyrd Sisters” (1988), “Witches Abroad” (1991), “Lords and Ladies” (1992), “Maskerade” (1995), and “Carpe Jugulum” (1998). A second, separate series starring young witch Tiffany Aching and featuring Granny Weatherwax includes: “The Wee Free Men” (2003); “A Hat Full of Sky” (2004); and “Wintersmith” (2006).

⭐Old Granny Weatherwax usually succeeds at whatever task she sets for herself. However the local blacksmith has sired the eighth daughter of an eighth son (himself). A dying wizard staggers into the smithy and bequeaths his staff to a baby who he assumes to be an eighth son of an eighth son.Right count. Wrong sex.Granny tries to rectify the matter by destroying the staff, but it indignantly refuses to be destroyed either by force or by witchcraft. Finally she hides it in the smithy and life returns to normal in the little Ramtop mountain village of Bad Ass–at least until Eskarina is seven.As Pratchett puts it, “Magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass.” When young Eskarina sasses her father in the smithy, he slaps her, and then is knocked cold by the suddenly active staff.Granny realizes that the wizard’s magic had taken hold of Eskarina after all. Still, she’s a stubborn old woman with an unshakeable moral center. Wizard’s magic is not for females, but who’s to say Eskarina can’t be trained up as a witch?Thus begins one of the funniest apprenticeships in fantasy. Eskarina and Granny Weatherwax both have firm ideas on what a witch should and should not do. Granny wants to teach ‘headology’ to Esk, who scorns any technique that doesn’t involve flashes of light and/or bad smells. She wants to learn ‘real’ magic.After a near-death experience with a magical technique called ‘borrowing’ Granny finally girds up her many layers of flannelette and sets off for the Unseen University with her subdued (but not for long) apprentice. Maybe the wizards can teach Esk how to control her wild magic before it destroys her, and maybe Discworld along with her.There is a musty old rule barring females from the Unseen University, but how long is that going to stop a determined Esk (“Why is that little girl squinting at me?”) and an even more determined Granny Weatherwax?The witches of Ramtop Mountains are my favorite Discworld characters. I’m surprised no one has yet published “The Wit and Wisdom of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.” They answer all of the important questions of philosophy while getting clobbered by falling houses, chastening fairy godmothers, dueling with assorted wizards, fairies, and vampires, and generally restoring peace to the little villages of the Ramtops, Bad Ass included. They are the moral bedrock (in Nanny Ogg’s case, moral ‘bedspring’) of Pratchett’s sane and funny philosophy of life.If you’d like to read the Discworld witch books in order of publication, they are: “Equal Rites” (1987), “Wyrd Sisters” (1988), “Witches Abroad” (1991), “Lords and Ladies” (1992), “Maskerade” (1995), and “Carpe Jugulum” (1998).

⭐Granny Weatherwax, what more needs to be said for one of the cornerstones of the Discworld who makes her first appearance in Equal Rites. Granted she’s not quite the Granny (or Mistress if you will) that we come to know but all the elements are there. The story begins with the death of a Wizard who bequeaths his Staff and power to the eighth child of an eighth son which should have been a male child but wasn’t and this causes some complications further down the line. Young Eskarina Smith is taken under the wing of Granny to be taught Witchcraft but the girls innate gifts and the Staffs “help” means it will never be enough. So the decision is made to take Esk to Unseen University (Granny claims to know it’s location but she wouldn’t be where she was if she ever admitted ignorance of anything). Esk learns a painful lesson in how the Discworld works and more specifically the world of the wizards but Granny long ago learnt how to get what she wanted and this serves Esk well as she interacts with the domestic staff of the University as well as the latest initiate “Simon” who is a bit of a prodigy but alas has drawn the attention of the denizens of the Dungeon Dimensions…Equal Rites is the first of the novels to really reflect how Terry writes in the years to come, there is still a long way to go but it’s impossible not to rate the novel highly and is a very entertaining and easy read.

⭐‘But the fact is that if you use magic you draw attention to yourself. From Them. They watch the world all the time. Ordinary minds are just vague to them, they hardly bother with them, but a mind with magic in it shines out, you see, it’s a beacon to them. It’s not darkness that calls Them, it’s light, light that creates the shadows!’ – Granny Weatherwax‘Equal Rites’ by Terry Pratchett was originally published in 1987 and is Book 3 of The Discworld series and the first to feature the Witches. I did a dual read/listen with its unabridged audiobook narrated by Celia Imrie.Drum Billet is a wizard and about to die and needs to pass on his wizarding staff to a suitable successor: the eighth son of an eighth son. He arrives at a remote village where the wife of the local smith, who is an eighth son, is about to give birth to their eighth child.As the newborn is presented to the father, Drum steps in and passes on the staff to the child, oblivious that the baby is a girl. When he realises his error and moans ‘what have I done?’, the midwife, Granny Weatherwax, responds: ‘You’ve given the world its first female wizard.’For seven years Granny Weatherwax, who is also a witch, keeps a keen eye on the child, named Eskarina, for any signs of magic. When these appear, Granny starts to train her in witchcraft and later they travel to the city of Ankh Morpork to seek entrance for Eskarina into the Unseen University, despite the fact that the wizards are adamant that only men can be wizards.Granny Weatherwax is one of the Discworld’s most beloved characters. She is sharp-tonged yet down-to-Earth. Reclusive by nature, her foray into the wider world including the city of Ankh Morpork is quite amusing. Indeed, the novel is bursting with comical characters and interludes. Some are a little saucy.Pratchett packs his tale with fantasy tropes including a spectacular magical duel and a few Lovecraftian references.I somewhat envy readers who will be experiencing the Discworld novels for the first time though rereading brought its own pleasures.

⭐I somehow missed this, (the third) from my Pratchett reading list, and am very glad to have caught up with it. I only give 4 stars because, for me, nothing he wrote compares with “Thief of Time”. If you haven’t read it, even if you HATE fantasy, I urge you to do so. Back to Equal Rites – who wouldn’t want Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg in their life? This is what witches should really be like, and they will live forever unlike their much-missed author!

⭐I had heard about the disc World Series by Terry Pratchett but had never read it. When I decided to read it, imagine my delight to find there are 24 or 25 novels to read! So yes I did, I took the first novel and started to read, to become familiar with the physics of the disc world and to start to understand what might be happening and why. Mr Pratchett created for himself a world, with its own physics with the forces of magic being high on the list. Having described the world, the disc world, pretty thoroughly in the first two books I found myself enjoying this science fantasy as Mr Pratchett’s skills opened up and revealed themselves in his writing style. I am on book four and reading about the being called death and his apprentice, the book’s progress is interesting as you may imagine. Equal rites is a very pleasant little story about wizards and witches and a woman trying to grow up and develop as a wizard in the “masculine by tradition” Wizard world. Because I have read the earlier books, it is interesting to follow this argument in the disc world. The book covers the process up to puberty roughly and stops there. I have no doubt that the female wizard will appear in a later book. I quite liked her so I will look forward to that.The themes of the book are quite robust and do give the impression that they will last throughout the series of books, I am looking forward to the development of the different issues Mr Pratchett explores.

⭐Bought on my Kindle, part of the Terry Pratchett Disc World series. Prompt service from Amazon as always. A brilliantly written tale about what happens when a child born – destined to become a wizard is found to be a girl – as natural heir there is no going back despite the fact it breaks tradition and the old Wizard has expired literally just prior to this revelation. Chaotic and hilarious its a brilliant book with many laugh out loud moments and well worth reading as a ‘stand alone’ or chronologically as part of the series.

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