3.5 stars.

This was surprisingly different from the first two Rincewind books in terms of tone and style: there were far fewer jokes, and the structure was much more cohesive and more like that of a traditional novel. The same subversion of fantasy tropes is present, but tackles them in a more serious, critical way, presumably due to the soberness of the issues at stake. Overall, however, my enjoyment was about the same as the previous two, even if the reading experience was noticeably different.

As Pratchett tells us on the first page, this is a book about magic and sex (in the sense of biological category, not in the sense of the act). Elaborating on the criticisms of sexist double standards in magic first raised in his 1985 “Why Gandalf Never Married” speech, Pratchett illustrates the divide through two schools of magic: that of wizards, men who practise a circumscribed, ritualised, academic form of magic; and that of witches, women who live on the outskirts of society and practise a more chthonic form of magic that keeps them at one with nature. This provides sort of a sanitised version of the real-world conflict between men weaponising their institutional power to persecute wise women as witches, combined with Pratchett’s lampooning of present-day New Age stereotypes found at folk music festivals and the like.

This dichotomy is explored primarily through the eyes of two female characters, Granny Weatherwax and a young girl named Esk, who was intended to be born the eighth son of an eighth son (eight being the magic number rather than seven presumably due to the eighth, magical, colour of the rainbow in this world) and therefore expected to inherit the staff of a wizard, but instead was born female contrary to expectation. Granny, a wise but cantankerous old witch with something of a contempt for wizards and their ritualised practices, endorses the separatist approach to magic, insisting that only men can be wizards, only women can be witches, and ne’er the twain shall meet. Although the given justification that women lack the physiology to cast spells “because one needs…sperm…and body hair, muscles…violent alpha male predator stuff”, is obviously sexist and later revealed to be bunk, we also get to see what’s special and strong in women’s own forms of magic: although it lies outside the realms of the social acceptability and recognition granted to stuffy old wizards in their ivory towers, it has a tangible, practical power that improves ordinary people’s lives and gives it recognised value in the local community. In the end, we see that a girl can do a ‘man’s job’ after all (being allowed at last to enter the academy when at first she was only let in as a maidservant), but that letting women into an established men’s space or male-dominated tradition should not be accompanied by contempt or dismissal for the spaces and practices that women have carved out for themselves as a consequence of their historic exclusion.

This messaging seems very influenced by second-wave feminism, appropriately since it was published in the 80s. In this kind of discourse, there’s a fine balance to be struck between championing women entering traditionally male fields and not denigrating the work women have traditionally done, and Pratchett manages this delicate issue well. The showdown between an elite witch and a master wizard (which is apparently not, as the seasoned fantasy reader might suspect, a nod to T. H. White’s [b:The Once and Future King|43545|The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)|T.H. White|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1338741283l/43545._SY75_.jpg|1140206] but rather the invocation of a long-standing mythological trope) does not necessarily determine if one tradition is superior to the other: each has its strengths and weaknesses, and both have their purpose and place. Nevertheless, Granny Weatherwax undoubtedly steals the show as the cynical-yet-loveable crone willing to speak truth to patriarchy, but also to take a discerning and critical view of other women. In many ways her character is stronger than the book as a whole. Esk, on the other hand, is quite bratty and annoying, but I suppose this reflects her age, but I’m not surprised the character wasn’t reintroduced until about twenty years later. The wizards, in contrast to Granny’s trope-defying characterisation, are quite stereotypical lofty old men, but I expect we will get a more nuanced view of their characters in future instalments.

I understand from other reviews that this is still in the territory of the ‘first stab’, and that the characters and relationships between them will be more fruitfully rendered later on. Nevertheless, while similar in overall quality to the first two, it is at this point that we start to see the series’ emergence from straightforward fantasy parody into a more focused, yet still irreverent, examination of real-world issues.