"It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author’s control. They might."
The third Discworld book not only has a pun in the title, since it covers gender roles and how they are perceived on the Disc, and especially in regard to magic, but also introduces us to one of the best characters of all the books: Granny Esmerelda Weatherwax.
The number eight has considerable significance on the Disc. This has been mentioned before, but this story reinforces that importance. We meet Drum Billet, a dying wizard, who is following his staff’s (wizard staves are very important) directions up to the Ramtop mountains where the wife of a small village’s smith is having her eighth child, and the smith is himself an eighth son, and the eighth son of an eighth son is always a wizard. Drum arrives to give his staff to the newly born child as his own death is imminent, but as I’m sure astute readers can already guess, things don’t quite turn out as planned. His ghost laments about this fact to Death, who takes all wizards, witches, kings, and so on personally, but Death seems unperturbed by the staff’s choice.
The eighth child is in fact a daughter instead of a son. This causes all kinds of issues as only men can be wizards for reasons that come off just as superficial as such things come off in the real world. This means of course that Drum handed his staff to an infant Eskarina (Esk) and promptly died. Granny Weatherwax, who was the midwife, had tried to warn the smith, but he was too excited in his thoughts of having a wizard in the family, and didn’t discover the gender of his latest child until it was too late.
This is the main, although not the only, driver of the book’s plot. The book actually has two plots that intersect via Esk and Simon, a wizard she meets when Granny takes her to Unseen University, as her efforts to train Esk as a witch to avoid the wizard magic she was given don’t work out. Esk has potential and power, but the staff and the wizardly powers it provides prove insurmountable. We have the main plot about gender roles and equality, but also the secondary plot of Simon’s unique brand of theoretical magic and its effect on the very fabric of the Disc. This effect is, as one could likely guess, not exactly beneficent to said fabric.
Esk is a rare child character that isn’t obnoxious but still reads like she’s actually a child. Despite her power and being mostly quite bright, barring a blind spot that Granny can’t figure out, she never comes off annoying or arrogant. Simon is also young and sympathetic. His stuttering hinders him a bit, but others are often willing to help him finish his sentences, much to his relief. He’s obviously extremely bright and unsure of himself, despite having an insight into how magic works that is so profound that even eighth level wizards are paying attention to, and are quite baffled by, what he has to say.
But while Esk is great and Simon is also a good character, this book helps establish one of Discworld’s greatest characters, and that’s Granny Weatherwax. This is her first appearance in the books, and she only gets better from here, which seems kind of amazing considering how good she is even this early. She’s got power and wisdom, but also has some blind spots, such as where Unseen University even is before she takes Esk on the journey to get there. While she starts the book feeling that wizard and witch magic are directly related to the practitioner’s gender, later on when a wizard is telling her why witch magic is how it is compared to wizard magic, her irritation at his attitude is palpable, and affects how she thinks about such things later in the book.
This book combines the idea of equal rites and rights, with the subplot of Simon’s extremely unusual take on magic. The parts that focus on Esk and her quest to find a place in the world that works for her, instead of the world trying to dictate such things to our plucky protagonist, are the best part of this book. The parts with Simon are interesting and when they intersect with Esk’s story, it works well, but his arc isn’t as fun or as engaging as hers, and he works best when he’s interacting with Esk. I feel this book is certainly a step up from the first two books, but still not quite up with what is to come later. With Death feeling more like himself and the introduction of Granny Weatherwax, this is a great early book, and the beginning of the excellent witch’s arc as well.
3 and a half wizard’s staves out of 4.
Some fun quotes:
Granny Weatherwax was a witch. That was quite acceptable in the Ramtops, and no one had a bad word to say about witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape as he went to bed.
She had found them lodgings in The Shades, an ancient part of the city whose inhabitants were largely nocturnal and never inquired about one another’s business because curiosity not only killed the cat but threw it in the river with weights tied to its feet.
“Granny," said Esk, in the exasperated and remarkably adult voice children use to berate their wayward elders. "I don't think you quite understand. I don't want to hit the ground. It's never done anything to me.”
Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.
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