Terry Pratchett's Discworld - Lords and Ladies

Welllll it has been a while but lets try and finish Discworld by January! This review I’ve been meaning to write for ages but life, work, plague etc you know!

Team ups in fiction are unusual and tend to be more with people playing with the classics so Dracula can finally battle Sherlock Holmes. The nature of the Discworld allows though he various sub-series to run across each other from time to time. Lords and Ladies could be seen as the other side of Equal Rites as this time wizards arrive in Lancre but I think this story has so so much more going on for it that the revelations about our favourite witch and arch-chancellor are more additional easter eggs rather than the main event making it a really great tale

This tale came out in 1992 the year I did my GCSEs so I honestly don’t remember too much about it bar a lot of stress and relief that that was over. Farewell school uniform and hello the mysteries of the Sixth Form Common Room. It was the year Barcelona had the Olympics, Bill Clinton arrived in the White House, John Major squeaked an election and at the movies we were treated to the weirdness of Dracula and Batman Returns

My paperback copy of this book is dated 1993  (I’m sure I can talk about that some other time)

Publisher – Corgi

Price - £4.99

The fairies are back – but this time they don’t just want your teeth …

It's Midsummer Night – no time for dreaming. Because sometimes, when there's more than one reality at play, too much dreaming can make the walls between them come tumbling down.

Unfortunately there's usually a damned good reason for there being walls between them in the first place – to keep things out. Things who want to make mischief and play havoc with the natural order.

Granny Weatherwax and her tiny coven of witches are up against real elves. And they’re spectacularly nasty creatures. Even in a world of dwarves, wizards, trolls, Morris dancers – and the odd orang-utan – this is going to cause trouble . . .

Elves briefly appeared in the early Rincewind tales but as with much of the Discworld Pratchett seems to have retooled them and while many stories had pointed out the fair folk were not always to be trusted for many years elves had become in fantasy as some sort of blond-haired super race that all should respect. I like that the counterpoint to that is the one character who bows to no one Granny Weatherwax!

There are tonnes to enjoy in this story so let’s explore a few angles before we return to Granny. There is a lot of character development again setting up stall for future books as rather than the next adventure for the trio we see in particular the evolution of Magrat and Verence as rulers of Lancre. The witch we may have thought was the weakest is now about to become a Queen and that really starts changing the central witches dynamic and the strains leave to both funny and tragic arguments about who is really in charge. What I loved about the witches is you can see they all don’t hate each other (but will never admit it) which makes the ways they can insult each other accurately all the more painful. That they do repair things sensibly makes this all seem a very human friendship.

Witches get explored further as we meet the young and rebellious women hoping to be the next generation. This is also a subtext for the main battle with the elves as here we have people wanting the dark glamour of magic and power against the much more low-key (but arguably no less powerful) headology of the main witches. Diamanda and Granny are perhaps a lot closer in temperament than they’d like to think but while Granny had the will not to use the power of the Elves Diamanda does not. The scene though Pratchett uses to stress the difference is when Granny helps a child at a contest and wins the hearts and minds of the village yet again. Power isn’t all about the imagery its what you do with it that matters. The elves symbolise that completely.

The elves then are an unusual villain and so much more interesting than yet another Dungeon Dimension invasion. In many ways they represent the typical Pratchett villain – obsessed with power and status to lord it over the rest but they’re the type of villains that humans love to obey. Pratchett seems to be saying e have an attraction to the glamourous and seductive leaders who promise the world and give little back bar more suffering. They feel delightfully dangerous and when they arrive on the Disc we see a battle for Lancre that gets really bloody and nasty as the people of Lancre fight back from the Witches down to the wonderful Hodsarghhh. Just possibly the commonest people know not to trust every smooth-spoken genius who knows how to make things better. Always a useful lesson to learn. This battle is also where Magrat really learns to be a Queen isn’t all dresses ad tapestry but fighting for your land and people – by the end she has earned that Crown.

So lets turn to Granny. Compared to the evil twin revelation of Witches Abroad I think this story is much more interesting exploring her character and fate. The temptation for Granny to give in and let her nastier elements be released has been hinted at a few times but this tale starts the train of Granny battling her limits not just to do amazing bee magic but also fighting the urge to go full evil witch even for the best of reasons. It wouldn’t take much to do that and that becomes a fascinating hallmark of her character as her story progresses. In counterbalance with Ridcully’s arrival we also see the price she paid to be Granny - a lost love that Pratchett plays with giving us alterative universe ideas of the happy couple. A soppier author would have left the two together but here they just know it is not meant to be and they have their own lives to get back to. A beautifully human, realistic and bittersweet ending.

I really enjoyed Lords and Ladies it feels much more epic in stakes than earlier Witches tales and they use of older magic and the Fae help with that depth but for me the key success is all these characters now feel fully three dimensional. They may all live on the crazy Disc but they have lives and fears of their own now. Lords and Ladies again points to changes in how Pratchett approaches these stories now and that the characters are the real stars of the show.