Lords and Ladies is Pratchett in the middle of his skills, a confident writer knowing exactly what he wants to say. Granny Weatherwax and the Witches return to Lancre at the height of summer for a royal wedding, but something is wrong. Foolish young girls have been dancing around a ring of standing stones, reality is weakening, and the elves are coming back. This is a witches book, but it brings in the wizards for support as well, and bonus jokes.

It's impossible not to love the witches as characters, or the tiny kingdom of Lancre, but where this book excels is in its depictions of the enemies. Pratchett strips away centuries of fuzzy folklore to get to the essence of elves. They are predators. They think they're naturally better than you, and their magic means that you start to think like them. Pratchett compares the elves to wasps and cats, and develops a psuedo-scientific explanation for their weakness to iron and magnetism, and why