Great Discworld Re-Read: The Light Fantastic and Equal Rites

Welcome back to the Great Discworld Re-Read! I've decided it's been long enough, it's time for me to re-read through the entire* Discworld series of books in publication order and finish by reading The Shepherd's Crown, the last book written by Terry Pratchett which was published ten years ago and which I have never read.

                                               

Next up to bat is The Light Fantastic (1986), which is the direct continuation of The Colour of Magic. As far as I can remember, this is the only true duology in the series where one picks up almost immediately where the other ends. The fact that he and his publishers made readers wait three years to find out what happened to Rincewind and Twoflower seems a little cruel to me, but I live in a time where a book a year is pretty common for series (with some exceptions, of course). Hell, I don't even like having to wait a week for the next episode of The Great British Baking Show, so, you know, I'm impatient like that.

Rincewind and Twoflower are dealing with the after-effects of The Colour of Magic, and discovering that the world has more in store for them than just letting them fall off the edge of the Disc. We learn a little more about the magic of the wizards, and we meet the greatest hero in the Disc, Cohen the Barbarian. I love seeing what happens when a hero ages, and how he handles listening to Twoflower tell of his exploits from his younger days. It's a lovely touch.

I'll be honest - the wizards are probably my least favorite of the characters of Discworld. They're pompous, arrogant, and just plain irritating most of the time, and I don't quite understand why so many people want to join their ranks. Still, watching Rincewind stand on the sidelines of what he feels like he should have had, I can see it a little bit.

This leads me into the next book, Equal Rites (1987). Here we meet one of the more formidable characters of the Disc, Granny Weatherwax. We're still dealing with the wizards, but now we're coming at them from a different angle.

And what an angle it is! Being able to see the two distinctly different magic systems in play, and how they're not just different systems, but entirely different ways of looking at magic, is a master stroke. It's something that Sir Terry keeps up throughout the series, with the witches more focused on headology and the ways in which you don't use magic while the wizards are bent on gaining as much power as they can and using it in as many flashy ways as they can. Both groups are very intent on making sure everyone else knows that they are a witch or a wizard - the hats are critical in identifying a magic user on the Disc - and the ways people respect (or don't) those hats is fascinating.

Eskarina, the first woman wizard, has a lot to overcome in order to become a fully-fledged wizard. While there are some great pieces in this book, it's a bit of a let-down when you see that there's a lot of the internalized misogyny on the Disc. The wizards, of course, are convinced that a woman can't become a wizard, because that's simply not done, but Granny Weatherwax also has a lot to overcome in order to take Esk to the Unseen University for wizard training. Even then, there are pieces where it feels like Granny loses a bit of herself as she becomes more of a "fashionable" witch in the city, and it feels like she stops being the character I know her to be. The end of the book seems to indicate that she'll lecture for the Unseen University, and that she'll date (!) the arch-chancellor, both of which are things that are dropped in later books and are never heard of again, from what I remember. It just doesn't feel like Granny.

This is the danger of reading such a long-running series again - I know the characters as they've developed over time, and so going back to their first appearances feels like reading the rough drafts, before they've had a chance to get some polish on them. To a certain extent, that's exactly what it is - again, I have to remind myself that this is one of the first books of 41, and if I were to look back at my own writing from thirty years ago, well, it wouldn't be pretty. (Honestly, looking back at my own writing from five years ago ain't that great, either.)

Either way, both of these lay some groundwork for the world and the characters, and it's always fun to go back to their roots and see how far they've come. Now, on to Death's first prime-time appearance in Mort (1987).