Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
A great parody with a serious message, 19 Sep 2000
Having read 1/2 dozen of this series, I think the best ones involve Granny Weatherwax - a highly formidable lady. Nanny Ogg is hilarious,and I can identify with Margat, the well-meaning but unconfident young witch who gets bossed around by the older two. This novel sees Pratchett doing his own amusing take on Macbeth, also ripping off the Sleeping Beauty fairytale. But he also uses the book to make the serious point that stories are powerful and can be used to change history (or at least our memory of it). Maybe he makes this point as the play Macbeth is historically dubious (Shakespeare not wanting to offend Queen Elizabeth). In this book, as usual, Pratchett borrows heavily from others, but he is so good at parody that he gets away with it.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
All the Disc's a stage--and the players are hilarious, 26 Dec 2002
Although we first met Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters gives us the three witches-Granny, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick-in all of their glory. These are my favorite characters in the Discworld, and loud peals of laughter are always to be found when this remarkable coven of witches gets together. The story itself is a thoroughly Pratchett-like concoction of Shakespeare, fairy tales, satire, and infinitely rich comedy. The king of Lancre, much to his surprise, has been murdered by the Macbethian Duke Felmet, and he is not at all happy about this. No one, in fact, is happy, including the very kingdom itself, which physically shows its rage at having a new king who despises his own royal domain. The witches are also not happy, as the Duke works continually to discredit them among the people-Granny Weatherwax just doesn't have any truck with that at all. Of course, in a story such as this, there has to be a long-lost child of the murdered king who will eventually come back to right the wrongs done his father and dethrone the regal malefactor-or something along those lines, anyway. Things are never quite that simple on the Discworld.The antics of the witches are hilarious. Granny Weatherwax is a stalwart personality who never admits she might be wrong or that there is something she is not familiar with. Nanny Ogg is a rather worldly witch who enjoys nothing more than getting blasted and drunkenly singing about hedgehogs or the fact that a wizard's staff has a knob on the end. Then there is young Magrat, quite plain in appearance, who believes the traditional ways of witchcraft are best and whose sometimes naïve, positive nature often conflicts with the thinking of her older cohorts; you have to love her, really. Her romance of sorts with the shy king's Fool is a rather comical yet sweet subplot to the novel. My favorite scene, one of the funniest I have ever read, concerns the witches' trip to the theatre; Granny has no understanding of theatre or drama, and her increasingly raucous reactions to the performance she sees is not to be missed. You don't have to know Shakespeare intimately in order to enjoy the numerous allusions to his work, particularly Macbeth and Hamlet, but I decided to read those two plays before reading Wyrd Sisters in order to make sure I caught as much of the comedy as possible. From the attempts of the duke to wash the blood from his hands to the manipulations of the duchess to the performance of a drama in order to call out the murderous king for his treacherous deeds, this fictional cauldron is swimming with Shakespearean ingredients. It's remarkably witty on a number of levels, yet the constant humor does nothing to take away from an intriguing and not wholly predictable plot. Even if you don't agree that the three "wyrd sisters" are the funniest and most remarkable characters inhabiting the Discworld, I do not see how you could possibly fail to find much enjoyment and humor in this novel.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Good fun, bit turgid towards the end, 8 Jan 2006
This book is a lot of fun. "Equal Rites" (3rd book / 2nd story in the Discworld series) was both magical and marvellously observed, making it an effortless read and with young Eskerina heading the cast of characters and the old crone Granny Weatherwax in attendance...it was all simply spell-binding, and definitely one of my personal favourite Discworld novels up to that point. But the 6th book in the Discworld Series "Wyrd Sisters" is also a little gem, even if it is less ground-breaking (borrowing much and paying homage in the process to many Shakespearean plays), which nevertheless left me chuckling, cheerful and generally thaumaturgically charged all over. This time around it's Granny taking centre stage with her coven of witches (Granny herself along with the very un-witchly Nanny and perpetually eager Magrat) in faithful tow in yet another tale of unlikely-applied magic, kingdoms gone awry, and generally deceitful and diabolical deeds.
I haven't read Hamlet, McBeth, or Othello, but I gather that this book is an attempt at parodying those Shakespearean plays and it was about two-thirds of the way through that I did eventually twig and realise that these Shakespearean references were more than just accidental textualisation - they were almost a complete replication of Shakespeare's works. The correct term is probably 'homage,' but whatever you want to call it 'Wyrd Sisters' IS Shakespeare (albeit set on an unrivalled Discworld, borne like a coffin on the shoulders of four elephants who themselves ride on the back of the infamous star turtle Great A'Tuin). And it was only when I realised this fact that my enjoyment of the book somewhat dissipated, not because I dislike Shakespeare, but because (despite not having read his plays before) I must have on some level absorbed the various plots from the media and as a result the story suddenly just didn't feel as fresh or original, as it had done to me only moments earlier.
But having said that, "Wyrd Sisters" remains a fun-filled, feel good story, which for all its daring and apparent dislike of the fantasy/fairytale genre- remains surprisingly true to the happily-ever-after-ness that the genre is famous for. Don't get me wrong...Pratchett clearly gets a real kick from mocking the genre in which he operates, but he's also very well aware that audiences just won't tolerate an unhappy ending and that's completely ok with me!
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