Equal Rites: A Discworld Novel (Discworld Novels)
by Terry Pratchett
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Book Summary Information
Author: Terry PratchettEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-09-13
ISBN: 0060855908
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Equal Rites: A Discworld Novel (Discworld Novels)
Book Review: Gosh; what a to-do over a girl wizard! Get over it, guys...
Summary: 5 Stars
I just re-read this book and came in to write a review, but I'm alarmed at the amount of hostility I find here!
The story follows Eskarina Smith ("Esk"), at whose birth a dying wizard is present. He bequeaths to her his staff, amidst sundry pyrotechnics, of course, and Granny Weatherwax (See "Weird Sisters") takes the tyke under her wing.
Apparently, Wizards and Witches are quite different kinds of people, and very early on, Esk displays the "frightening precociousness" that we see later in Tiffany Aching (of the "Wee Free Men" series). One must understand, I suppose, that many of the reviewers here have had little opportunity to get inside the head of an 8-year-old girl. You could probably split the reviews neatly in half along that line!
Esk (and Tiffany after her) are idealizations --or cartoons, if you wish-- of how the male gender views junior members of the distaff sex. It's hard not to like her --despite her waywardness, which flows from the intense curiosity that is present in all human beings, but which is usually whipped out of us at an early age, especially those of us who are girls. In one fascinating scene, Eskarina, having successfully ditched Granny Weatherwax, explores the town, gets very hungry, goes into a tavern and asks for "a mug of goat's milk, please." It illustrates, stopping right there, her kind of polite stubbornness. There is something vaguely rural English about this temperament, which makes it hard, perhaps, for US readers to identify with.
Unless you're paying attention to what is happening to Granny herself, you miss a good deal of the gender discourse here. There is little or no hostility in the book itself; the author presents a mirror to what happens in our society with humor and understanding, and just the right degree of impatience and ridicule. Granny is the only spokeswitch for the entire female sex, with the gentle support of Terry Pratchett himself.
My complaints have to do with the fact that this book exists in a slightly different universe than the rest of the Discworld series (and even the Wee Free Men sequence, written primarily for children); as pointed out earlier, both Esk and Simon, and the "minor staff" of the Unseen University seem not to appear in subsequent books, except for the Librarian (Ook!).
As to the "hurriedly finished" feeling noticed by some reviewers, I think I know what they mean, but honestly, this story is a good deal better than other Pratchett stories, where he does seem to panic about 90% of the way through, and begins to improvise furiously. But here, it works.
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Summary of Equal Rites: A Discworld Novel (Discworld Novels)
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.
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