Pratchett, Terry: Equal Rites
Equal Rites
Author: Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fantasy/Farce
Pages: 213
Final Thoughts: Okay, but not as hilarious as I was led to anticipate.
Well I've had people recommending Terry Pratchett to me for... well, it just might be years now. And since I was already going a little bit overboard by borrowing more books than I'll be able to read in the next three weeks from the library, I figured one more slim book wouldn't hurt.
I've read several comparisons between Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. Now, I'm not sure if I can just label it as more life experience between my first read of Adams and this read of Pratchett, but I wasn't swept off my feet by the humor like I wanted to be. Now, this is the third of the Discworld books, and I have to admit that a bit of Adams' magic had worn off for me by the end of his third book, so maybe there's a bit of a slump in satirical third novels. Who knows?
Beware: the next paragraph has a few spoilers, but nothing you wouldn't naturally assume based on the fact that it's a comic plot - i.e. everyone wins, except the bad guys. It was too short for me to feel justified by using a cut.
So anyway, the book itself. The characterizations were rather flat to me - Granny was probably my favorite, because she was obviously never meant to change, and was just a good character anyway. Of course, I didn't know what until about a quarter of the way through, but I'll overlook that. Esk didn't change enough for me to consider her a dynamic character. Yes, she ends up as a wizard despite all the resistance of the wizards and their "lore", but it's really not her own doing. The Archchancellor of the Unseen University turned into a good character, but only in the last forty pages or so. And despite the fact that Granny was, in my opinion, the strongest character, the story obviously isn't hers. It's supposed to be about Esk. I didn't think it was, really.
Aside from that, I was disappointed because while Pratchett mentions a lot of potentially clever things - things that could have been taken to a whole new level of comedy in the context of a fantastical world - and then I felt like my imagination was wilder than his, which is a bit of a let-down.
Those are the most easily described sources of my disappointment. The idea of the Discworld itself is great, and mostly I felt like he didn't make the most of all his comic and satirical possibilities. Still, I won't give up on him yet. Hey, it's only rarely that I conclude that thousands of fans around the world are wrong. It's happened before, but I try not to base it off a mere 200 pages.
Book #19