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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more