Equal Rites

Rating:
Summary: Whatever happened to Esk?
Review: Drum Billett, an elderly wizard, is dying, and is waiting to pass on his magical staff to the newborn eighth son of an eight son before he expires. Unfortunately, the eighth son turns out to be a daughter, but Drum Billett finds this out too late, he's already given her the staff. Eskarina grows up showing signs of having strong magical powers, so her perplexed parents apprentice her to the witch Granny Weatherwax (making her first apperance in the saga). Granny becomes convinced that Esk really does have wizard powers, so they set off on the long journey to Ankh-Morpork to try and convince the wizards of Unseen University that Esk is fit to be a wizard. Nobody at Unseen University has any time for Esk, except a young apprentice wizard called Simon. It seems there are sinister forces at work in the university, and only Esk and Simon can stop them. Granny Weatherwax is a less complex character in this book than she later becomes, but still formidable. The magical battle between Granny and Cutangle, the chancellor of the University, is one of the highlights of the book. One thing about this story ahs always puzzled me though. At the end of the book, Cutanlge decides that Esk can be admitted to the University, and he is considering admitting more female students. He even suggest an exchange programme with Granny Weatherwax (with whom he seems rather smitten). But in subsequent Discworld novels, the charming Esk has vanished without trace, and Unseen University is as much a male bastion as ever. I wonder why? This was the first Discworld novel I ever read, and it is still one of my favourites.

Rating:
Summary: Not Pratchett's best. Good for feminists.
Review: I am still learning to write reviews, so I'm sorry if you don't like this one. Here it is.

Now Esk is the eighth daughter of an eighth son. Because she's the 8th of the 8th, she should become a wizard (and supposedly a good one), but the most important part of the of the wizard's lore is, no female wizards. Not only this, but her granny wants to train her to be a witch. When granny sees Esk just can't become a witch, they take a long journey, to Ankh-Morpork, (where the Unseen (magical) University is located), to get wizard's training.

The book EQUAL RITES is the third in the Discworld series. It's a good one, but I don't think it's one of the best, not very funny (but still funny), and not that interesting. Even so, if you want to read any of the other Discworld books, I recommend reading them in order, start with the first, and don't skip any of them - this way you get all the jokes in the following books. So, buy Equal Rites, you won't be sorry.

Rating:
Summary: Magic and Women Just Don't Mix... or Do They?
Review: In this, the thrid book of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, a young girl is given a wizard's powers. Well everyone knows that a girl can't be a wizard! Girls are witches, and that's that.

Esk is the eighth son of an eighth son... or at least she was supposed to be. The wizard that bestowed his staff and powers upon her died the second she was born and didn't know that the eighth son *wasn't* a son at all. As Esk grows she is taken as an apprentice witch by Granny Weatherwax, a wonderful, humorous old woman that doesn't take any nonsense, especially from that wizard's staff that has a mind of its own. But soon Granny discovers that the wizardly powers just won't stay out of it and that Esk must be taken to Unseen University for training. The only problem is that the Unseen University doesn't allow women, after all, wizardy is a man's world. Join Esk and Granny on their way to Ankh-Morpork and see what happens in this wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: Very Different Than the First Two, but Satisfying
Review: Maybe it's just me, but I missed Rincewind and Twoflower as I read this, hoping they would pop up and find themselves nearly blown to bits or narrowly escape getting eaten by something. Although Granny Weatherwax is a funny character in her own right, and Esk's inability to control herself is sometimes interesting, I just miss the bungling misadventures that came before.

That said, this is still a great book, and any fan of Discworld would do well to read it. It seems at this point that Pratchett was still filling in the gaps and trying to decide on characters and setting, as well as just what exactly the otherworldly beings of magic actually are and can do. This book answers some fundamental questions about why the disc is like it is, and thus moves forward the whole mythology underlying the strange things that happen in the individual books.

Further, the parallels with the modern world do continue in fine style, this time centering on the young girl wishing to become a wizard - a males only profession. One wonders if the young lady entering the Citadel had to endure the presence of a librarian-turned-primate in order to further her study. Regardless, it's fun and interesting.

Rating:
Summary: A story about magic
Review: Pratchett seems to love the character dynamic between the Curmudgeon and the Innocent, when both are working together towards the same goals. He used this to great effect with Rincewind and Twoflower in the first two books of his Discworld series, and it pops up again here.

Granny Weatherwax (the curmudgeon) is a witch. She is charged with steering 8-year old Esk towards wizardry. Only Esk is a girl, and as we all know, girls can't be wizards. She was supposed to be the eighth son of an eighth son, but somebody messed up the paperwork. It is this conflict that is central to the book. Pratchett does a nice job lampooning the (perceived) differences between men and women (i.e., practical vs. intuitive knowledge; book study vs. study of nature, etc.) that exist in our world, transporting them to his own imagined landscape. That's to be expected from a book punnishly titled "Equal Rites". On top of that, we get a cunning parody of institutes of higher learning. Unseen University (where boys go to become wizards) and its hierarchy of learned scholars knocks the stuffing out of scholastic life.

All the Pratchett devices are back for another run through the ringer. Along with the above mentioned character types, we also have some silly humour (a group of marzipan ducks magically anthropomorphize, only to melt when they take to the river; "that's natural selection for you," comments the cheeky narrator). And another inanimate object without a face inexplicably manages to make facial expressions. Twoflower's Luggage has an heir apparent in Esk's magic staff. Some comments I've read state that Pratchett relies too heavily on these devices in later books. Well, it's only three books into the series, and I still find them fresh and interesting. Time will tell, though.

While not as laugh-out-loud funny as its predecessors, "Equal Rites" moves along its narrative with much more force. Which still makes it an entertaining read. Still, here's hoping that Pratchett managed to combine the two in equal proportions as the series went along.

Rating:
Summary: A story about sex
Review: Sir Terry Pratchett is, of course, the foremost writer of comedic fantasy these days. If you haven't yet read Pratchett, then there is a large gap in your education. Pratchett is best known for his Discworld novels, the Discworld being a disc (hence the name, obviously) that is travelling through space on the backs of four giant elephants who are, in turn, standing on the back of an enormous turtle. Magic works on this unique world, which is populated by a wide variety of fantastical creatures. This is the setting for Pratchett's funny, satirical, and insightful comments on the real world and the idiotic things that people do.
Equal Rites is the third Discworld novel, and in it Pratchett has, for the time being, taken leave of Rincewind, the hero from the first two Discworld adventures. We are instead introduced to the next major Discworld character, Granny Weatherwax, the pre-eminent witch of the Ramtops (Pratchett appears to have reused the last name of the late Archchancellor from The Light Fantastic, who is later revealed in The Discworld Companion as having been a distant relative of Granny's). The Ramtops area seems to have a large concentration of the magically apt (this having to do with the fact that the strong magical field of the Discworld earths itself here), since the current Archchancellor, Cutangle (who, like so many of the early Archchancellors, only appears in one book), also originally hailed from this area. Yes, I do have a life.
Every one knows that the eighth son of an eighth son will become a wizard, so when the wife of the smith in the village of Bad Ass - the smith himself being an eighth son - gives birth for the eighth time, it surprises no one that the wizard Drum Billet shows up to pass on his powerful wizard's staff to the newborn infant before he dies (and is reincarnated as an apple tree, and later as an intelligent ant). The only problem is, the good old wizard forgot to check the baby's sex.
As Pratchett says on the first page of the book, this is a story about magic, and also a story about sex. And it's a story about eight-year-old Eskarina Smith, commonly known as Esk, who is the eighth son of an eighth son, only she's a daughter. And girls can't become wizards, that's the lore (a pun, perhaps, on the way some English-speaking snobs can't properly pronounce the word "law"). So Esk becomes Granny's apprentice instead, training to become a witch. But in time it becomes clear that she has wizard's magic in her also, and this magic can't stay bottled up forever. Esk is protected by her staff, which has great power and a personality of its own (much like the Luggage), but ultimately the only place where Esk can find the help she needs is Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork, the high seat of wizardly magic on the disc. So she sets out on her journey, accompanied by Granny.
While on the way, Esk meets the boy-genius Simon, who has a permanent stutter and an even more permanent hayfever. Eventually, after some adventures, she arrives at Ankh-Morpork, but things do not go as she had hoped there. Instead, she gradually finds herself heading for a confrontation with the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions, who are always seeking to find a way into reality, and have now finally found that way. Only Esk can stop them.
In this story, Pratchett deals with the perceived differences and inequalities between the genders. He doesn't delve too deeply into this, however, which is a good thing. Equal Rites isn't quite Pratchett at his funniest best, and this book is perhaps a slightly weaker entry in the saga, between the peaks of The Light Fantastic and Mort. The ending is a bit anti-climactic, and there are, at times, gaps in the story where more could have been done. But, all in all, it's still a good story, and interesting enough to be an easy and lightly entertaining read.

Rating:
Summary: Another amusing book by Terry Pratchett
Review: This another book by T. Pratchett in the Discworld Series. In fact, the third one in order. The first thing that you will have to get used to is that the main character is not Rincewind. It is a small girl called Esk. She is the eighth daughter of the eighth son. There is a tradition that when the eighth son of the eighth son is born, he will become a mage. An old mage didn't notice that she was a girl and gave her his wand. Now, when she is nine years old, she decides to join the Unseen University, where no girl ever studied... The book is written in the same style like the previous ones. This means that it is readable and highly entertaining and funny. It contains some new ideas and characters, that will appear again in T. Pratchett's later books (e.g. Wyred Sisters). It's not that funny like "The Light Fantastic", but if liked "The Colour of Magic" and "The Light Fantastic", you'll love this book too. I recommend it to all Pratchett fans and to those who would to start reading high quality fantasy books.