(no subject)

[skygiants]

I couldn't find my copy of Witches Abroad, so I had to hold off on this review until I could steal it from Boston. Which I now have done!

Witches Abroad used to be one of my favorites, and I still really like it on the reread, but - hmmm. The first half -- in which Magrat, Granny and Nanny careen around the countryside being TERRIBLE TOURISTS and accidentally disrupting fairytales -- does not do it for me like it used to, I think mostly because I am more sensitive these days to privileged people careening around being terrible tourists. So for me, that section of the book mostly went like this:

NANNY: Listen to me practice my terrible fake French!
GRANNY: All this foreign food is DISGUSTING and UNHEALTHY. WAITER! TAKE AWAY THIS THING I ORDERED.
BECCA: This is not fun, this is like traveling with my elderly relatives @___@
MAGRAT: It's not fun!
BECCA: Right!
MAGRAT: So let me tell all of you how you're doing EMPOWERMENT wrong due to this fake Eastern martial arts philosophy I've been studying . . .
BECCA: SIGH.

(Though I did forget that Gollum popped up for a cameo! That did make me laugh.)

I also don't reeeally understand why fake New Orleans is in the middle of fantasy Transylvania, but once the main plot started to get going, I sort of forgot about all that and just enjoyed watching Granny Weatherwax be completely badass.

I was also struck, as I neared the end, by how -- maybe more even than any other Witches book until Tiffany Aching comes along -- this is a book completely centered around dynamics between women. The main power struggle between Lilith, Granny and Mrs. Gogol; the complicated professional-friendship-ish dynamics between Granny and Nanny and Magrat; everyone's attempted mentorship of Ella . . . I mean, there are a few men running around, but one of them is a zombie, one of them is a cat, and one of them is a frog, and none of them are really shaking the plot much. It's all the women, motivated by other women. So that, actually, is pretty cool.

Comments

[campkilkare]

About the geography--the Transylvanian kingdom is really just one of many along the way, and looking at my Discworld Mappe it is just kind of the furthest edge of Uberwald. Most of the kingdoms along the way are continental Europe pastiches, but the transition to America (New Orleans if it was Disneyworld) happens when they hit all the kingdoms Lily wrecked honing her skills with stories. (Including Kansas!)

In a later book we find out Genua was briefly part of the Ankh-Morpork hegemony, and then vice versa, under General Tactitus, which probably explains some of the cultural mishmash.

I have always enjoyed the naming of Genua, because of the pun Pratchett never gets around to making--he is prepared to leave the discovery of the Genuan article and so on to the reader.

[skygiants]

Debi pointed out to me too that Genua is also, weirdly, sort of Russia, which is in fact on the far side of Transylvania -- Gogol is a Russian name, and she rides around in Baba Yaga's house. Which I never noticed, because Russia makes no real sense pastiched with New Orleans . . . but so be it, I guess?

. . . I will, however, concede the pun.