Equal Rites (Discworld)

Equal Rites (A Discworld novel)By Terry Pratchett Henrik Lind
Terry Pratchett was born in 1948 and is still not dead. This is the way he is introduced in most of his books and I hope that he will be for a long time. He is one of my favorite writers in any genre.
He started working as a journalist in 1965 and had many different journalistic task`s before joining the central electricity generating board. There he were press officer for four power plants. All this came to an end in 1987 when it was obvius that the discworld series was becoming so popular that he could no longer do both things. And I am positive that there are millions of fans around the world that is very grateful for his decision.

A short explenation of The discworld novels:
Terry Prattchet has written 23 or 24 novels about the discworld, Equal Rites being the third.
Each book is over four hundred pages so it is an awful lot of text. While it is not necessary to read them in the "right" order, it sure helps and it makes you appreciate them more.
Each book picks a general occurence in our society. Then twists it, clarifies it, at the same time as it makes it even more complex. This could be anything, often though it is about pejudices that are fairly common. For example westerners view on the east in "Interesting Times". He really hits the right spots and while he do not say they are wrong he shows them in a way that really makes you think about your own views. And he does this in a very humouristic way. In other books he makes fun of the music industry or Motion picture industry. Or any other thing that he finds extremely stupid, and it is a big risk you do to after reading them.
I think you get the general idea. Terry Pratchett mocks most of humanity, our customs our culture and our believs among other things. And at his arsenal he has a mind as sharp as the scythe of death, (who by the way is one of his favorite characters), armed to the teeth with sarcasm, irony and last but not least a humour that makes you laugh your *-* of, he lets us experience the marvels of the discworld.

A word of advice for all those who are about to read anything by Terry Pratchet.
Do not get hung up on the plot or on the obvius things or you will miss the essentials.
Equal Rites.
The book begins with a despription of the discworld. As hinted the world is not round, it is flat. It does however have some other unique features not found anywhere else in the multiverse. In the empty space between stars swims a giant turtle, ten thousand miles across.
This is great A`tuin, the world turtle, on it`s back stands four enormous elephants which hold up the disc on which our adventure takes place. The Discworld, it is as you might have guessed not very like the world you and I know. First it is a highly magical world, which makes it very unpredictable. Second it is what You might call a fantasy world, a little medieval. It has the standard citizens that you might find in such a world. Dwarves, trolls, elves, dragons and wisards. Although this is not of great importance to our story, (except for the wizard part maybe), it might be good to know.
The story begins a stormy night. As we zoom in we see something red struggling against the wind. Now we can see that it is a wizard, partly because of the pointy hat and the robe and partly for the fact that the raindrops stopped several feet around him and they where oozing.
This is Drum Billet, a wizard on his last journey. Powerful wizardry comes by heritage and Drum was to found someone to take over his wizard staff and continue were he left out.
The most potent wizard material is a eigth son of a eight son and it was that Drum Billet was out to find, not exactly find maybe, wizard don`t go looking for things that they had not allready found.
Drum fullfilles his quest and hands over his staff to what he believes is the eight son of a eight son. Well even the greatest wizards do misstakes, when he foumd out that the eight son of the eight son really was a daughter it was to late, the staff had been passed along and death knocked on the door to get Drum, He greeted everyone and whent about his business.
This might very well have been the end to this story if it was not for Granny Weatherwax the local whitch who was convinced that girls can not be wizards, I mean, who has ever heard of a girl being a wizard? So firm in mind, and believe me Granny weatherwax is firm in mind, she could have her will with most mountains. She took the girl the edjucate her as a whitch.
Needless to say this do not work out and Eskarina, or Esk for short, showed every sign of being a wizard of quite some magnitude. Worried that Esk should hurt herself or someone else Granny decided that it maybe was better if she got real wizard edjucation.
Of course she was not accepted at the university. So her granny finds her a job there, just to be near things. To make a long and extremely complex story short. Esk finds out that there is a big danger threatening the world. Creatures from the dungeon dimension seek entrance to the physical world. Esk and a boy named Simon, who his a genius, saves the day and finally Esk is allowed to begin at the university.
Voilla!! The end.. and they lived happilly ever after... NOT.

Why read this book?
As I said, the story is only there as a ground. A thing on wich Prattchet can build the story within the story. I have not really grasped the full meaning of this one yet since I have only read it once.
But essentially you could say that there is no thruth but the one we make ourself.
And their will be no change without someone doing anything about it, preferably you yourself.
We are often treated in the way we deserve, if we are not willing to change things then who are we to complain about it?

Last but not least I would like to say that I genuinly envy those who encounter Terry Pratchett.

This book came out a looooonng time ago - it was one of the first ones that got me hooked on Terry Pratchett's work about ten years ago. For Granny Weatherwax fans, you might be a bit disappointed, since he developed her present character much more in "Wyrd Sisters" and the books since. However, it was the first book that Pratchett started to really flesh out his world beyond Anks-Morpork, and it is a great read.
Thank God they're re-releasing all these older ones...give me a chance to buy them again, since they've been stolen by various friends over the years!

Terry Pratchett is hilarious. The Discworld series just makes me laugh out loud.

This concerns a wizard who, when passing off his magic staff to an eighth son of an eighth son, turns out that he's passed it off to an eighth daughter. Since there can't be any such thing as a female wizard, the local witch, Granny Weatherwax (based on Katherine Anne Porter's Granny Weatherall), tries to get her to learn witchcraft instead. But it doesn't work so she has to be sent to the Unseen University, the prestigious wizard college. This one is hilarious.