(no subject)

[skygiants]

Lords and Ladies, oh gosh, Lords and Ladies. A reasonable proportion of the Pratchett books I've been trucking through have pleasantly equalled my expectations, but I think I had literally forgotten how good Lords and Ladies was. Not that I didn't remember it as good! I just didn't remember it was that good.

Here are the top ten things that are great about Lords and Ladies:


10. Once again, all of the important battles and shifts in power dynamics happen between women. That's just HOW THEY ROLL in Lancre.
9. That being said, Shane Ogg the Perennially Ridiculous and Jason Ogg the Somewhat Less Ridiculous both get to be legitimately awesome.
8. On a related note, Ridcully is unhelpfully soppy and lovestruck and it's taken exactly as seriously as it deserves. (I am actually really sad that Ridcully and Granny never get to meet again in the series, I would read a million books in which they fight crime, or possibly each other, while having belligerent sexual tension. YES I WOULD. You can't judge me, YOU TOTALLY WOULD TOO.)
7. And he got the Librarian to Lancre by telling him they had shelves and shelves of UNCATALOGED BOOKS! THIS HURTS THE LIBRARIAN IN HIS PRESERVATIONIST SOUL.
6. Being engaged to a king doesn't have to be about sitting around doing embroidery, and being kind and sort of soppy doesn't have to mean being weak.
5. Nanny and Granny are the best of teams. The challenge in the square! That may well be my favorite scene, hands down.
4. Granny Weatherwax IS A STONE COLD BADASS
3. Nanny Ogg is a SEXY badass.
2. Magrat Garlick is a soppy, kittens-loving, ARMOR-WEARING ELF-SLAYING BADASS QUEEN
1. No, actually, even after Magrat put on her shining armor, hoisted her weaponry and went charging off to rescue her prince, Granny Weatherwax is STILL THE MOST BADASS OF THEM ALL, FOREVER AND ALWAYS

Guys, I am excited for Maskerade and for Carpe Jugulum, I know that these are books I also love enormously, but right now I'm just sort of like how does it get BETTER?

Comments

[campkilkare]

It has its pre-cursor in the "the thing about small furry rodents is sometimes they're a mongoose," bit of Witches Abroad, but the elf queen finding out what happens if you strip Magrat of all of her second thoughts and regrets and neuroses and insecurities and just leave the witchy core, is hands down my favorite Magrat moment of all.

Because of COURSE the elf believes that all of the strength and merciless crossbow murder has been just an affectation, just Magrat trying to psyche herself up to be what she really isn't. Of COURSE it couldn't possibly backfire to take a witch and burn her down to the core of what she is and what she does. Possibly this is the drawback of gathering intelligence with psionic powers--you come away thinking your enemies are as weak as they think they are.

(I think I am just a sucker for stories where the villain signs their own death warrant.)

[skygiants]

Yeah, I think it was actually really amazing especially reading all the Witch books in close succession, because you can see the development happening -- you see more and more what happens when you back Magrat into a corner, you watch Nanny and Granny growing into balance with each other and Granny growing even more into HERSELF. And Lords and Ladies is kind of the moment when all that growth from the previous books bursts into action -- it is, which I forgot to mention, the only book so far where Terry Pratchett feels it necessary to explain that there's been development before this, that it's a continuing story, and these people have been and are growing. AND GROWING INTO BAMFS.

(Me too! And this is such a perfect example of that. I also love people who are far more amazing than they think they are . . . and that's Magrat.)

[campkilkare]

And speaking of the prologue--I feel like there is some unarticulated connection between Granny extricating herself from the mirrors, as Lily couldn't, and Granny's "torture of infinite alternate selves" in this book. I am not sure I can put it into words--did that experience prepare her to do what she does here? are they somehow the same event, in some abstract narrative way? is Lily out there in that infinite matrix of Weatherwaxes, desperately running from life to life looking for the "real" one--but there's... something.

And it is funny, viewing the books in relation to each other, that a common theme is "right authority"--the witches decide to replace the king with their own chosen figurehead in WS, then depose Lily who did the same thing in WA, then stop the elves from doing the same to Lance in LL, then Granny comes down with a serious case of self-doubt when it is time for her to play kingmaker/kingpreserver again in CJ. Witches can't rule, but they can involve themselves in deciding who will, and that's a very, very dangerous activity. All of which goes back to MacBeth.

Maskerade... doesn't quite fit that pattern, but then Maskerade is not so much about three witches as about Agnes-on-her-own plus Nanny-and-Granny-minus-Magrat, which turns out to be "how Nanny keeps the increasingly powerful Granny from losing it without the usual three-witches-business." Actually with Granny's pose as Dame Weatherwax in Maskerade, she skates verrrrry close to Lily's "Lady Tempscire".

It also implies that the kingship/queenship thing was a Magrat storyline under it all, interestingly enough.

So.... that was a lot of babbling, but I feel like there's a throughline here, right? Just... I can't put my finger on it.

[campkilkare]

--also, both WA and Maskerade end with Granny doing something impossible (sticking her hand in the fire without being burned, grabbing a sword without being cut). But in Maskerade she says there is always a price, and you can decide when and how to pay it. But she never articulates that in WA, where the trick was she channeled it into the voodoo doll of Lily, since they're so similiar. So maybe that was the price--as long as Lily was around Granny "had to be the good one" and could act fearlessly knowing she was in the right, but getting rid of Lily opened her up to the potential of going to the dark; of becoming Lily, in fact.

[skygiants]

In a weird way I think they are the same event, now that you bring it up -- I think maybe the connection has something to do with the difference between illusion and reality. Esme Weatherwax doesn't have any problem with figuring out what's real. But in Lords and Ladies she has to accept that the Esme she is now is not the only one that's real -- that there are other possibilities for who she could be.

Esme Weatherwax is all about the difference between story and reality, but reality has always been more complicated than she likes to see it. In Wyrd Sisters and Witches Abroad, they thwart the story. But then in Lords and Ladies, Magrat uses the story. And Esme spends a lot of time rejecting Ridcully's nostalgia as a story, but then has to admit that in some world, some way, it's true.

This isn't quite a complete throughline either, but . . .

[batyatoon]

Oh my heavens yes. The elf queen thinking Magrat is weak and useless because Magrat thinks she's weak and useless. And then SURPRIES SEKRIT BADASS.

[holyschist]

Last time I reread Lords and Ladies I was also pleasantly shocked by HOW AWESOME it was (also one of the neater explanations I've read for the elves & iron thing).

Also GRANNY WEATHERWAX ♥.

[skygiants]

I had a really hard time writing this review at first, because all I could formulate in my head for a while was <3333GRANY WEATHERWAX<333333HOW SO AWESOME<333333

[batyatoon]

I think Lords and Ladies may be the first Discworld book that I legit fell in love with.

BUT YES. GRANNY WEATHERWAX VS. THE ELF QUEEN.

"You've lived longer than me but I'm older than you. And better than you. And madam, that ain't hard."

[skygiants]

ahhhhh yes! OLDER AND BETTER. And -- man, I keep coming back to how happy I am, coming back, to read these books and realize again and again that Granny is the main character. She's old and she's wise and she's not set. She's growing and changing in protagonist-y ways all throughout the Witches books, and that shouldn't be so rare in fiction for older ladies, buuuut it is.

[vivien]

As an older lady (though not quite that old!) I have to say it's nice to see a character like Granny. We never stop growing or changing, but if we're lucky, we also never stop being badass in our own ways.

being kind and sort of soppy doesn't have to mean being weak.

Tell it, sister. This is one thing I find I get annoyed with at times. Not a lot, but sometimes! For a female character to "kick ass" in a traditional sense, she has to fight like a man, basically. I love Alanna, I adore the characters who take on that role... but I'm not one of them. I'm kind and sort of soppy, but that definitely doesn't mean I'm weak. It just means I fight in a different way.

I admire Pratchett very much for writing these books and creating these characters, and I'm delighted with what he's done in the Tiffany Aching series, too. He writes women I know and/or women I'd like to be. And to manage that in a fantasy novel isn't the easiest thing in the world!

[campkilkare]

One of the most interesting things, I think, about the "kind and soppy doesn't equal weak" thing is--Nanny and Granny get it, and Magrat doesn't. They are always saying Magrat is a wet hen, but then they toss some huge problem her way and just expect her to handle it and be fine, and it makes Magrat SO MAD. But she always is just fine. And then they turn around and call her a wet hen again. And she never puts it together--and they never stop to tell her, of course--that that's because there's nothing wrong with being a wet hen.

ps your icon is perfect for this

[skygiants]

Absolutely! I wish there were a hundred or a thousand characters like Granny out there. I really wish it was not so astounding to me that Granny is who she is. But Granny at least is a start.

AND WORD. I used to be the kid who wanted to see the lady with a sword kicking ass and taking names, and . . . okay, I still want that, but I also want the lady who loves dancing and pretty dresses, and the lady who's the best damn knitter in the district, and the lady who logics the bad guy to his demise, and all the other hundreds of ways to be awesome. (You know what the best way is to get that? WRITING MORE THAN ONE SYMPATHETIC WOMAN INTO YOUR STORIES. Fantasy writers, take note.)

[surexit]

being kind and sort of soppy doesn't have to mean being weak

♥♥♥

When he gets it right, he really, really gets it right.

[skygiants]

Sometimes, it's just really nice to remember that these are things that someone is saying.

[genarti]

I cannot believe that you had forgotten about this, because in my mind it's, like, the ULTIMATE BECCA DISCWORLD BOOK. (It was also the favorite Discworld of one of my college friends and roommates, who was also an English major named Rebecca.)

I need to reread it! I have not in ages. I love it, but it's not one of the ones I lend out except to people who already know and love Discworld or who are 100% predictably drawn to Midsummer Night's Dream retellings, because, I dunno, I have this memory of the power of it depending on associations from both Shakespeare and other Discworld in a way that doesn't necessarily translate? But that's a memory from when I last reread it years ago, and may be off-base.

But I LOVE ALL THE BADASS WITCHES IN IT SO MUCH, so I really do need to reread.

(However I would get tired fast of the Ridcully and Granny show of belligerent sexual tension, I have to say. This is mostly because I get tired of Ridcully and most of the other wizards pretty fast in any form. I don't hate them, but a little goes a long way for me. BUT I WOULD READ GRANNY IN LIKE ANY CONTEXT EVER, so there is that.)

[skygiants]

I ALSO CAN'T BELIEVE IT. But I think at the time I used to usually zoom straight from that into Maskerade, which is, you know, overpowering lols due to the Phantom connection. And Maskerade is great! BUT LORDS AND LADIES IS AMAZING.

I actually was sort of surprised by how little the power of it came from Shakespeare this time around. I mean, the Shakespeare connection is a fantastic bonus, but really it was all about the characters and they would be equally as awesome without that.

(Hee, well, Lords and Ladies was just the right amount of Ridcully for me, because he shows up like 3/4 of the way through, Granny relentlessly mocks him and maybe has like .1% of a feeling, and then he's gone. The perfect formula and one I would be very happy to see repeated!)

[allochthonous]

Somehow, Granny's successful Borrowing of the bees is the most badass thing she has ever done. You have to be good to do it with bees!

(Also, hi! I am adding you because I am loving your Pratchett reviews, hope you don't mind!).

[skygiants]

ALL THOSE TINY MINDS. Granny, how so awesome!

(And welcome! :D More people to talk about Pratchett with is always a plus around here.)