Cheap Equal Rites Compact Discworld Novel (Book) (Terry Pratchett) Price

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Customer Reviews of Equal Rites Compact Discworld Novel

Why is that little girl squinting at me?
Old Granny Weatherwax usually succeeds at whatever task she sets for herself. However the local blacksmith has sired the eighth daughter of an eighth son (himself). A dying wizard staggers into the smithy and bequeaths his staff to a baby who he assumes to be an eighth son of an eighth son. <
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>Right count. Wrong sex. <
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>Granny tries to rectify the matter by destroying the staff, but it indignantly refuses to be destroyed either by force or by witchcraft. Finally she hides it in the smithy and life returns to normal in the little Ramtop mountain village of Bad Ass--at least until Eskarina is seven. <
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>As Pratchett puts it, "Magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass." When young Eskarina sasses her father in the smithy, he slaps her, and then is knocked cold by the suddenly active staff. <
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>Granny realizes that the wizard's magic had taken hold of Eskarina after all. Still, she's a stubborn old woman with an unshakeable moral center. Wizard's magic is not for females, but who's to say Eskarina can't be trained up as a witch? <
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>Thus begins one of the funniest apprenticeships in fantasy. Eskarina and Granny Weatherwax both have firm ideas on what a witch should and should not do. Granny wants to teach 'headology' to Esk, who scorns any technique that doesn't involve flashes of light and/or bad smells. She wants to learn 'real' magic. <
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>After a near-death experience with a magical technique called 'borrowing' Granny finally girds up her many layers of flannelette and sets off for the Unseen University with her subdued (but not for long) apprentice. Maybe the wizards can teach Esk how to control her wild magic before it destroys her, and maybe Discworld along with her. <
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>There is a musty old rule barring females from the Unseen University, but how long is that going to stop a determined Esk ("Why is that little girl squinting at me?") and an even more determined Granny Weatherwax? <
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>The witches of Ramtop Mountains are my favorite Discworld characters. I'm surprised no one has yet published "The Wit and Wisdom of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg." They answer all of the important questions of philosophy while getting clobbered by falling houses, chastening fairy godmothers, dueling with assorted wizards, fairies, and vampires, and generally restoring peace to the little villages of the Ramtops, Bad Ass included. They are the moral bedrock (in Nanny Ogg's case, moral 'bedspring') of Pratchett's sane and funny philosophy of life. <
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>If you'd like to read the Discworld witch books in order of publication, they are: "Equal Rites" (1987), "Wyrd Sisters" (1988), "Witches Abroad" (1991), "Lords and Ladies" (1992), "Maskerade" (1995), and "Carpe Jugulum" (1998). <
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