Lords and Ladies

I went in to this book thinking how nice it was to finally reach the point of the Discworld series where we get some continuity from book to book. Which speaks to my aggressive blocking out of Rincewind more than anything. Rincewind has, up to this point, essentially had one long adventure broken up over four books. But as they are my least favorite books in the series, I tend to forget them.

The witches, on the other hand, are some of my favorite characters. And though this is the fourth book Esme Weatherwax has appeared in, it's the first one to really deal with the consequences of a previous book. Back in Wyrd Sisters, Magrat fell in love with Verence. Then she ran away from the whole thing in Witches Abroad. And now she's returning to discover that Verence has already planned their entire wedding and it's happening soon.

There are also elves, set on coming to our world and ruining everything in service of their own entertainment and short attention spans. So Granny packs Magrat off to the castle and goes about trying to stop the elves. Magrat, meanwhile, learns a lot about standing up for herself, going after what she wants, and punching bullies in the face.

This book is a lot of fun. It's a very dark take on the whole concept of elves (or fairies, depending on how you look at it). There's a lot of romance, and the longest action scene Pratchett has penned yet. It's a lot of fun re-reading it, knowing where everyone will eventually end up. It was especially fun to get an early cameo by Agnes Nutter, who stars in one of my favorite books in the entire series.

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