Wyrd Sisters by: Terry Pratchett

Ah, Shakespeare, one of the greatest writers of all time famous for plagiarizing a bunch of famous stories and turning them into plays that will be the bane of high schoolers everywhere.  I personally have always had a soft spot for the Bard of Avon and it seems Terry Pratchett does as well.  Wyrd Sisters, the sixth Discworld novel, takes its cues from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth to craft a story about the death of the king of Lancre, cat-hating ghost much to Death’s annoyance, murdered in cold blood by his own brother the Duke and the scheming wife.  Pratchett’s story overall presents itself simply, working more as a character piece than any real plot.  Sure there are plenty of jokes cracked at the Bard’s expense, with flowery language and ripping off of history and famous stories galore, but mostly it’s the characters.  Alas the King was a sensible king overall and he gives his son, not yet named, to three of the psychically inclined, our three wyrd sisters, three witches of the title.

Yes the three witches are our protagonists for the novel as they form a sort of coven.  First is returning Granny Weatherwax, again resuming her role from Equal Rites as kindly, yet extremely stubborn, old woman.  With one foot always stepped in the past, she doesn’t like the idea of a coven or curses or unnecessary harm to people, but make her angry and you’re going to regret it.  I hear being a toad can be quite nice, but not everybody is so amphibiously inclined as others.  Granny is also ever the traditionalist, not really being able to see the reality of the world around her, refusing to admit that she could potentially be lost, and witches should not be interested in *gasp* men.  She has this air around her that she thinks so highly of herself that she’s almost wrapped right around to the lowest of the low levels of self-confidence.  She’s the one character who really doesn’t develop much and that’s all a part of her charm.

The other two witches are foils to Granny Weatherwax in their own ways.  Nanny Ogg is the older of the two, a mother of fourteen children who all adore her, and a grandmother of, well I don’t actually know.  She’s also got a demon cat and seems to know how to cook.  Yeah her character works in the fact that it is simple.  She’s sort of that fun uncle that everyone has and the scene where the duke ‘tortures’ her is really the highlight of the book.  She’s got to be Magrat Garlick’s mentor after her old mentor Goodie Whemper, not appearing in this novel, died and because Granny Weatherwax is such a traditionalist that poor Magrat is really naïve.  The thrust is that they have to take care of the prince whom they call Tomjon and give to a bunch of actors.  Magrat Garlick is kind of a hippie overall and she doesn’t really understand sexual attraction or love which is of course hilarious, and she ends up actually having a decent relationship with the Fool, who also becomes the King because he’s the bastard of the previous king so is crowned Verence II.  Their relationship is never really explained by the end of the novel and I cannot tell if that’s because Pratchett is being confusing like Shakespeare or just doesn’t know what he’s doing with the novel.  Tomjon’s fine with it because he’s an actor now and his friend William Shakespeare, I mean Hwel, build a theatre in Ankh-Morpork called the Dysk.  Yeah this one’s just a bit too odd, but in a pretty good way where it doesn’t quite make sense, but hey that’s a lot of Shakespeare. 9/10.

Sourcery by: Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett opens his fifth Discworld novel by stating the origin of an eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son: a wizard squared, a source of magic, a Sourcerer.  Sourcery is the first Discworld novel to return to a previous storyline as its main plot (The Light Fantastic doesn’t really count as that’s a direct sequel to The Color of Magic and they work together as one story).  This installment returns to the story of Rincewind who actually gets to go on an adventure where is characteristic cowardice and ability to talk his way out of situations is actually one of the solutions to the plot.  I contend that one of the issues of the first three Discworld novels read like short story anthologies to the detriment of their plots and my overall enjoyment.  Mort as a novel improved on this to show that Terry Pratchett can write some great stuff when he focuses his effort on one plot and message with generally linear progression from exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.  Sourcery, while keeping two plots going, at least does that to great effect while adding in Pratchett’s brand of comedy and commentary.

This time the commentary is twofold.  First as we are returning to the Unseen University, Pratchett is writing on gripes with traditionalism and bureaucracy.  Touched upon in Equal Rites, the Unseen University is obsessed with the procedure of gaining wizardry levels like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.  Coin, the Sourcerer of the title, comes to the University and finds it laughable at the lack of power the so called “eighth-level” wizards have and immediately enacts changes.  This brings up Pratchett’s second commentary, the throwing the baby with the bathwater in the changes.  This is revealed slowly over the course of the novel as his initial changes of replacing the Archchancellor and allowing everyone to improve in magic and reach new heights.  That changes when Coin decides that the library books must be burned down because they are of the old ways and he will bring the new ways of Sourcery.  It’s okay though because the Librarian locks himself in and saves the books.

Coin, while responsible for doing these terrible things, is not the villain of this novel.  Coin is just the victim of circumstance in this situation as his actions have been manipulated by the spirit of his father.  Coin is just a child and has this childlike desire of escaping to what would be his perfect world, which he does in the end.  His father, Ipslore the Red, is introduced on his deathbed with a scene with Death.  Ipslore had passions of the heart and against the lore of Magic he went and got himself a wife and had eight sons.  He was against the idea that wizards shouldn’t be falling in love and having kids, because he thinks that’s the pinnacle of life and without love life wouldn’t be worth living.  Death responds with cat’s are nice in a lovely nod to Mort.  Ipslore ends up cheating Death, who reacts appropriately.  Ipslore’s soul is placed in his staff and it is through this that he influences his son.  It’s his vendetta and Pratchett doesn’t actually explore this aspect of the novel that much except at the end of the novel when Rincewind is trapped in the Dungeon Dimensions, the University is saved, Ipslore is taken by Death, and Coin goes off to his own little world to enjoy the rest of his life.

Oh yeah, Rincewind doesn’t get a happy ending in this one.  The Luggage is smart enough to get him out of the University before Coin’s reign of terror begins, but as the hat of the Archchancellor is stolen by Conina, Cohen the Barbarian’s daughter, he’s on an adventure in no time fast.  Rincewind as a wizard hears the voice of the hat whispering in his ear to escape the city.  This takes them to Al Khali, a parody of Disney’s Aladdin and stories of that like which is a large section of the novel.  The party gains a few new members in the form of Nijel the Destroyer (a barbarian in training who falls in love with Conina) and Creosote (the seraph of the city who is just an idiot who allows his evil Vizier to run the city).  There are shenanigans with magic carpets, snake pits, snakes, and a rather small genie before returning to Ankh-Morpork.  The Patrician is turned into a lizard and Rincewind again has to face the Things in the Dungeon Dimension where he remains.  I won’t ruin most of the best jokes of Pratchett, but the novel is a great one with some issues with choosing not to go down certain possible story paths in favor of returning to Rincewind.  8/10.

Mort by: Terry Pratchett

Sometimes a book will come along and reach deeply into the heart of the reader and not let itself go until you’ve finished.  Sometimes it’s because of an amazing plot, sometimes it’s because of amazing characters, and sometimes (just a few sometimes mind you) it’s because it’s a book that comes around at just the right time to read.  Something similar to all three of these things happened to me when reading Terry Pratchett’s fourth Discworld novel, Mort, or as I would have called it Death’s Apprentice.  Mort is the first Discworld novel that Terry Pratchett would describe in his own words as a good book and is the first in the series to feature Death as a major character.  Yes, he had appearances in the other books, but here he’s really one of the highlights.

Death’s motivations for taking on an apprentice are varied, but include two major points.  First, he wishes his adopted daughter Ysabell to have someone her own age to talk to and second, he’s not quite satisfied with his lot in life.  Oh yes he realizes life and Death isn’t fair, that if he leaves his position whoever replaces him will be worse than him because he will remember living, and that he really doesn’t have a choice in the matter.  None of this matters as he tries it anyway and Pratchett writes Death in such a way that you really feel bad for the guy.  He’s somehow the most human and inhuman character of the novel.  He has the power to stop time, slice reality, yet his horse’s name is Binky and he likes cats.  He doesn’t quite understand the concepts of love or fun; music and dancing cause him to be flustered; he can be drunk and sober whenever he wishes; he drinks an entire bar; and yet the climax of the novel is an ultimatum: a fight between him and Mort.  This is where in the novel he is presented as an extremely menacing figure ready to kill Mort, yet in the final scene he is adorably grateful that he was invited to Mort and Ysabell’s wedding.

Ysabell made her first appearance in The Light Fantastic and here in Mort she’s gotten a bit of a change in the character department.  She’s still crazy and immediately dislike’s Mort when her father brings him home, which means that by the end of the novel they are married happily.  She has been sixteen for thirty years because time does not work the same in Death’s domain.  She’s been annoying Albert, Death’s manservant/butler/closest thing to friend, by taking books out of Death’s library about girls and reading them.  She has extreme sexual tension with Mort and they eventually find themselves the duke and duchess of a land, due to Mort’s meddling with time.  Of course Mort meddles with someone’s fate because he has some sort of attraction and this is where the book falters.  Princess Kelli is supposed to be who we are rooting for as she is accidentally saved from assassination by Mort while doing the Duty and while the plot revolves around her not being dead, Pratchett cuts back to her plot too many times for comfort and it gets boring.  She’s just there so we can get to the Unseen University with Albert, fix reality, and get Mort and Ysabell set up as a couple.

Albert is a much more entertaining character, even if he is a bit minor.  He’s your standard curmudgeonly old man who does his job, is good for a bit of a chat, but is harboring a great secret about his past.  He’s actually the founder of the Unseen University, where we actually get a cameo from Rincewind which is entertaining, and he’s probably able to keep Death calm and convince him to get back to his job.  He also becomes afraid of Mort when Mort starts to become Death which is an intriguing transformation, if not a complete one.  Mort is the emotional centerpiece of the novel.  Pratchett brings him quickly into the hearts of the reader by setting him up as the black sheep of his family.  He is sent to be picked up as an apprentice and has to wait until midnight, when all the other candidates are gone before Death comes along to make him his apprentice.  He’s not emotionally stable, probably stemming from his bad family life, and cannot help himself in saving a poor girl when he should have been doing his job and leading her on to the next life.  His quick wit and quick understanding of Death and his ways is something that really endears the reader to him further.  His slow transformation into the new Death happens by a few words in the same text style of small capital letters that Death’s dialogue uses.  His eyes become blue and he begins to lose control of himself.  He is a great character and he and Ysabell’s romance actually works well.  Mort as a novel gets an 8/10.

Equal Rites by: Terry Pratchett

Equal Rites is about million in one chances, eighth sons of eighth sons, men, women, witches, wizards, and numbers.  Terry Pratchett’s third Discworld novel takes on a new main character in the form of Esk Smith, meant to be an eighth son of an eighth son and ergo a wizard, but she comes out a daughter.  She still becomes a wizard of course, but not without lack of trying as Drum Billet passes on his powers before the cosmic mix up can be found and our dear old Death takes him away before they can be taken back, and now we have Esk destined to become a wizard even if the world around her tells her that women cannot be wizards.  Witches surely but never wizards.  Ironic that this is a girl power narrative often confused to be written by a woman implying that men cannot write satisfactory girl power narratives.

The simple girl power narrative in the book is the weakest aspect, mainly because after the first few mentions and the first few times Esk overcomes someone saying she cannot do something because she’s a girl, it becomes rather boring as the book comes to the same flaws as The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic.  The plot is paper thin and really there so Pratchett can move from one scenario to another scenario.  At least we do not have a third book of this happening to Rincewind and Twoflower, as they’re characters are developed enough as a third book would have the narrative become stale.  Pratchett decides to introduce an entirely new set of characters to facilitate a new story.  Eskarina Smith is the novel’s plucky young protagonist, who is written perfectly as a child.  Esk never feels like one of those too perfect to believe perfect children, nor one of those too evil to believe troubled children.  She has her moments of naiveite, not understanding how the world works and her wizard’s staff facilitating this worldview through its weird actions.

The bulk of the book is taken up by Esk and Granny Weatherwax journeying to the great city of Ankh-Morpork to enroll Esk in the Unseen University.  They get in all sorts of troubles on their travels including bar fights, fortune telling, and defending the Unseen University from the Things from the Dungeon Dimension in the book’s rather rushed climax.  Granny Weatherwax is a character who will reappear in later books, but here she is just a supporting player in Esk’s story.  Granny is a witch who specializes in herbs and headology, basically telling people what they would like to hear causing their own futures to line up.  She can of course do magic and you would regret crossing her, but why bother when her methods work wonders.  Weatherwax is a kind soul deep down, but she puts on a stern air as she teaches Esk witchcraft and begrudgingly takes her to the Unseen University.  She has no real time for wizards and their so called pure magic and steals the scene whenever she’s present.

The final important major character is Simon, a wizard in training with a stuttering problem.  Simon is quite a poor character as he immediately falls for Esk who is only happy to help him speak.  He’s got extremely powerful magic powers, but is obsessed with working through complex mathematics which are magic in their own right, and sitting back while abuse is hurled at him constantly.  It is through poor Simon that the Things nearly enter our world, but he eventually gets better.  There are plenty minor characters in the novel with highlights being the librarian of the Unseen University (an orangutan) and Archchancellor Cutangle who has no chance of getting together with Granny Weatherwax, but sadly the book does not do enough with the abundance of characters to leave the deepest of impressions.  5/10.

The Light Fantastic by: Terry Pratchett

The Light Fantastic is an interesting novel if you are coming to the Discworld with no prior experience to the series like I am.  It is first and foremost a direct sequel to The Color of Magic, but it demonstrates a real improvement in the writing style as Pratchett, while not doing a satire on anything more than fantasy tropes as was with The Color of Magic, has improved at telling a story and sticking to that story.  The format of The Color of Magic as four short stories which allows for Pratchett to tell two great ones and two average ones, but The Light Fantastic is first and foremost a character piece.  This character piece is based on that of our incompetent wizard Rincewind, who only knows one spell from the Octavo which jumped into his head and has been waiting for the right moment to jump out.  The problem with this one is that Rincewind isn’t exactly a deep character.  Sure he’s extremely enjoyable to follow, but he doesn’t really have much growth or development beyond being a coward and being manipulated into doing the Octavo’s bidding.

The more interesting character of this novel is Trymon, the kniving wizard who becomes the Archchancellor of the Unseen University after an accident with the Luggage kills the old one who was trying to summon the final spell of the Octavo.  Trymon is one of those villains with one character trait and a lust for power, coming straight out of a hammy B-movie, he invites the audience into his thoughts in a series of schemes before his eventual defeat.  There’s a reason that Tim Curry plays him in the television adaptation of the novel as there’s nobody else who could really play Trymon.  He could do without the tentacles at the end though.

While the format of the novel was indeed improved upon, there is still a very episodic nature to the events.  The plot is tied together with a shooting star signaling the time that all eight spells of the Octavo are to be read before the end of the world.  Of course it is up to Rincewind and Twoflower to stop this, even if they end up reading the spells and the Disc continues to be except the Great A’Tuin gives birth to eight baby space turtles.  The plot is tied up very loosely and Terry Pratchett has gone on record saying he didn’t really know where he wanted the book to go at points and it shows.  There are some amazing scenes: Cohen the Barbarian and Bethan have a great relationship, the eating of the gingerbread house abandoned by a witch because of those horrible children, Twoflower teaching the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse how to play bridge and Death becoming addicted to it, and Death’s daughter Ysabell are all highlights of the novel, but the whole is still not the sum of its parts.  The book is extremely enjoyable overall, but feels like it’s a first draft with no endgoal in mind.  7/10.

The Color of Magic by: Terry Pratchett

The Color of Magic written by Terry Pratchett is the first novel set in the Discworld, a planet like disc sat on the back of four Indian Elephants on the back of the Giant Space Turtle A’Tuin, gender to be determined.  It was published in 1983 and can be likened to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but in the genre of fantasy.  I first heard of the Discworld in a 2013 quiz bowl match at my high school, but would not pick up one of the books until January 2015, when I read The Color of Magic.  I would continue with the first two sequels The Light Fantastic and Equal Rites, planning to go in publication order until I got to the then final book Making Steam.  This was until after I had finished Equal Rites when on March 12, 2015, Terry Pratchett passed away after an eight-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease.  While I had no real emotional connection to Pratchett, I stopped reading the Discworld novels and promptly forgot to pick them back up again.  It has been three years since Pratchett’s death and after reading and enjoying Good Omens, I have decided to pick up the Discworld and enjoy in its absurdity.  So I raided my local Barnes & Noble and over the past few months have acquired the first six Discworld novels and am beginning today with The Color of Magic.

The oddness that comes with The Color of Magic, and the novel’s greatest weakness, is that it has no real plot.  Sure the book is put into a sequence of events and point A goes to point B, but there is no point C for conclusion.  The novel reads like a collection of four short stories exploring little adventures on the Disc that involve our two protagonists.  The first is “The Color of Magic” where we begin our tale in the twin cities of Ankh-Morpork as it is burning down.  The Disc has had its first tourist, the glasses wearing, insurance selling Twoflower, who is determined to see everything the Disc has to offer.  Sadly he has brought with him mounds of gold and the Luggage, a suitcase like creature which is sentient and hires wizard Rincewind as his guide.  Hilarity ensues as Rincewind, being a wizard who only knows one spell, is told to keep the man safe or else provoke a war, takes his eyes off Twoflower when things go south.  A pub owner takes out a fire insurance policy, and then proceeds to burn down his tavern to claim the money.  The city burns, Rincewind, Twoflower, and the Luggage escape, and the story is over.  It reads as extremely quick and quick witted, with Rincewind being a complete coward through and through, while Twoflower is naïve, and the Luggage is just plain weird.  This story also introduces the concept of the Disc which is already creative, and Death.  Death as presented here must take Rincewind’s soul personally as he is a wizard, even if he failed at the Unseen University.  Death pops up a few more times over these four stories and is entertaining whenever the text begins to become a capital font.  “The Color of Magic” has the problem of being a character piece without too much plot which is just fine for the beginning of the novel, but leaves you with some desires for more.  7/10.

The second story in the anthology is “The Sending of Eight” which is included to show how magic works in this universe.  The number eight must never be said by a wizard and must never under any circumstances near a temple of Bel-Shamharoth, the Soul Eater.  The plot of this one is that some gods of the Disc, mainly Fate and the Lady, have been playing a boardgame controlling Rincewind and Twoflower.  Fate is tempted, and Twoflower is naively wandered to said temple while Rincewind is imprisoned by dryads, before meeting up with Hrun the Barbarian in the temple.  Hrun mutters the word eight, which summons Bel-Shamharoth to kill them, but the camera Twoflower brought allows them to escape and Hrun begins to travel with our heroes.  This story is most definitely Rincewind’s story as we are introduced to his backstory and the significance of 8.  In the Unseen University, there is a book containing five plus three spells called the Octavo, and Rincewind, a resident of room 7a, accidentally opened the book and one of the spells lodged in his mind.  It will not leave until uttered or the death of Rincewind, and nobody knows which of the spells was read.  This and the idea of gods playing a game with our characters is excellent, however, while it is the shortest of the four stories, it is the weakest.  Hrun is a funny parody of your standard fantasy hero, and the imp in the camera is a joy with his wit, but the plot itself is weak and the pacing is far too off.  5/10.

“The Lure of the Wyrm” is the penultimate, and by far, the best of the four stories.  Our trio of heroes travel to the Wyrmberg, an upside-down mountain.  Here there be dragons, as the old saying goes, but these dragons lie in the mind, coming into existence in the vicinity of the mountain.  The inhabitants have a tradition where the new lord must kill the previous lord, their father, and their siblings and the three children of the dead lord cannot do it.  Liessa, the daughter of the previous lord, has poisoned her father, but she cannot seem to get her brothers to die.  She gets Hrun to do it for her and they marry.  Meanwhile, Rincewind and Twoflower are captured, Twoflower thinks up a dragon whom he names Ninereeds, and they escape.  Twoflower passes out due to lack of oxygen, Ninereeds disappears, and Rincewind magics them to a passenger jet in the real world on the way to the United States of America.  Rincewind is a doctor of nuclear physics and Twoflower is a tourist.  The Luggage appears and drags them back to the Discworld where they fall to the ocean.  This is by far the best story of the novel as it has a plot that grabs the reader, characters who are pretty well rounded (the previous lord of Wyrmburg being a standout in the humor department), and is only brought down by the odd ending.  9/10.

The Color of Magic ends with “Close to the Edge” a story where Pratchett decides as he is setting these books on a flat world, he must explore what that means to fall off.  There are astrozoologists attempting to determine the sex of Great A’Tuin in case he/she/it may be going off to mate.  Our protagonists are found by a troll, Tethis, on the Circumfence (get it) and are sadly sent to be sacrifices to Fate, who has promised the Krullians that their mission will succeed if these two are thrown off the edge of the Disc.  The Lady appears to them promising they will save them, Death is ready to get Rincewind, and they are thrown off the edge.  Death comes to meet Rincewind, who insists he is not dead, and recognizes this figure not as Death, but Scrofula.  As he feels cheated, (Death is dealing with a plague at the moment and could not attend) Rincewind is allowed to live.  This one feels more like it is set up for The Light Fantastic, it does not reach the levels of enjoyment.  I want to see just where this is going, but for now it gets 6/10.

As this novel is more like a short story anthology the score will come from an average of the four main stories.  The Color of Magic gets a score of 6.75/10.

The Naked Time by: John D.F. Black and directed by: Marc Daniels: You Will Leave With My Blood On Your Sword

“The Naked Time” was written by John D. F. Black, was directed by Marc Daniels, was produced by Gene Roddenberry, held production code 7, was the 4^th episode of Star Trek Season 1, and was broadcast on 29 September 1966.

Certain science fiction tropes have run their course and died.  The plague from space is one that was quite popular in the era of the Cold War, with the Space Age bringing the fears of diseases from the stars that humanity would not be able to combat.  The trope is an old one, drawing on a universal fear of the unknown and is a contributing factor in the early success of science fiction such as the famous Quatermass serials, novella Who Goes There?, and 1970s Doctor Who serial The Ambassadors of Death.  “The Naked Time” is one of those episodes of Star Trek where the writers are pioneering a trope and one that will remain in the public consciousness for a very long time.

The crew of the Enterprise have come to the planet Psi 2000 which is an ice planet that is about to die and a research team has not contacted the Federation for months.  Standard setup for an episode of Star Trek, and it is in the setup where the failures of the episode rear their ugly head.  In investigating the research base, Spock and two random crewmember’s (they’re names aren’t important) beam down and one of the crewmembers makes the mistake of taking off his protective gloves and touching things.  This is the kickstart to the plot as we have an exploration of what could have caused the deaths of everyone at the research station, found in positions such as working, showering with clothes on, lying down, etc.

This only gets us about fifteen minutes into the episode of course so the infection of our resident “red shirt” causes him to become irritable, attack Helmsman Sulu played by George Takei and some random Irish crewmember, and suddenly die.  Of course, this is cause for alarm as Sulu decides it’s a good idea to take a rapier and begin challenging people, shirtless, to a duel and the Irishman takes control of the ship, because he can do that apparently, and sing…very badly.  This is where the big twist on the disease comes in as it essentially makes people have a form of high energy intoxication.  It doesn’t kill them, but because the Irishman has taken control of the ship and as previously stated, the planet below is dying, here’s where our tension comes in.  The tension holds through the episode and it mixes extremely well with the absurdity of the performances.  George Takei gets an award for most flamboyant swordsman, while people are cackling like asylum inmates, flirting with women, and offering people cake, a swordsman is the most out there aspect of this because it’s obvious Takei is enjoying himself which helps the performance.

The standout however is when Mr. Spock is infected and becomes the opposite of his emotionless self.  That means of course that he becomes extremely emotional and gives a powerful speech about his problems with his family before snapping back into genius mode to save the ship.  Leonard Nimoy deserves an award and seeing him bitch slapped not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times by William Shatner.  The ending manages to bring the episode back to reality and ends on a note of uncertainty for the future: the crew has discovered time travel and is not opposed to using this in the future, with caution.  The final shot shows how great the direction of this episode was.

To summarize, “The Naked Time” is one of those episodes that uses a trope to its advantage with a stellar cast.  Its base is not the strongest, but the performances are stellar and go close enough to the top, without going too far over.  Shatner and Takei are the exceptions of course as they just let it all blow over into a masterpiece of campy goodness.  The direction knows just how to end the episode with a feeling of uncertainty for the future, almost acting like a real ending to the show possibly, even though it is four episodes in.  90/100