After the colossal success of Small Gods, you might think that Terry Pratchett might have wanted to try out some other new ideas. However, given the way that publishing works, any ramifications from a successful novel weren’t likely to be felt for a couple of books down the track, what we got next was a little more like business as usual on the Discworld.
But business was clearly booming: Lords and Ladies, the fourteenth novel in the series, is a complete delight.
It should be: we are entering a phase of Pratchett’s career where he has found a story length that he finds manageable, a world and characters with which he is intimately familiar and a fanbase that covers all levels of society. He’s also, at this point – 1992 – on his way to becoming the U.K.’s bestselling author, a title he would hold until around 1999 when another fantasy novelist would capture that position from him.
But it also shouldn’t be as good as it is: it’s the first novel in the series to come with a warning at the start that advises readers to make sure they’ve read the other books in the Witches sequence first. Really, though, it should advise that reader to go back and make sure they’ve read the rest of the corpus as well because we also get the Wizards and Librarian from Unseen University.
So what happens in this book?
Well, the witches have returned from their trip abroad and have come back to the kingdom of Lancre to find that it isn’t quite the same as when they left it.
For one thing, Verence, the king of Lancre is preparing for a wedding.
To Magrat.
Except nobody has told her.
And, while being Queen isn’t an onerous fate for her, she would have liked a little more notice.
For another thing, there’s also a troupe of young women experimenting with witchcraft – but not the sensible, traditional witchcraft that Granny, Nanny and Magrat are used to: this is a brand of witchcraft that relies on being flashy, and bold, and modern…
… And Granny can’t be having with that. Because these girls have also been up dancing around Lancre’s stone circle, which has alerted forces beyond our comprehension of their existence.
And those forces are ELVES!
It as about time, frankly: apart from a brief mention in The Light Fantastic, there has been very little to do with Fantasy’s favourite alien race so far in the Discworld novels.
But these might not be the elves that you’re used to…
They certainly came as a surprise to me: I’d grown up with J. R. R. Tolkien’s numinous, unflappable immortals as my models for what elves should be.
The Elves that inhabit the interdimensional spaces around the Discworld are of a different stripe altogether. Wyrd Sisters may have foreshadowed this: where that book stomped around on the structure of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, these elves – and this story – are straight out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
These are mischievous, glamourous spirits that are intriqued by humans, but in the way – as Pratchett alludes to – that cats are fascinated by small creatures they want to toy with and – possibly – kill. Part of the success of their attack is that humans have forgotten the vicious aspects of their nature and only remember their beauty and appeal. As Pratchett writes:
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
Or, as Nanny puts it:
They’d smash the world if they thought it’d make a pretty noise.
But it’s first and foremost a Discworld novel, and as a sequel to an earlier book, as well as one that’s going to set the tone for quite a few other books that follow in the Witches series, it sets out to widen the landscape as it were. So we meet a lot more characters who may or may not become major players in the future books.
First up, let’s look at Magrat. I mean, we already know her, but she undergoes a major change in this novel: she becomes Queen, which undermines her role in the coven as the junior witch (or “wet hen,” as Nanny disparagingly refers to her). However, it does also suggest that the triad of “Mother, Maiden, Crone” that Pratchett played with a little in Wyrd Sisters, may not be so firmly set out as previously thought…
There’s also Agnes Nitt, a trainee witch. She’s one of the young witches that set up shop while the older Witches were Abroad but, unlike them, she does display some genuine talent and is set to become a major player in future witch books (speaking of future Witch books: the whole “young witches having their own coven” is explored in a lot more detail about twenty books down the line when we get to the Tiffany Aching series).
Finally, there’s Jason Ogg, Nanny’s son. He’s the local blacksmith and is also – given his job and parentage – a figure with some magical talent himself. Jason is one of my favourite minor characters in the series. He’s quiet and slow but not dumb, and the way he deals with problems that come his way are often interesting and entertaining in their own right.
And the problems in this book are, as I said, Elves. Agnes and her coven have caught the attention of the Elven Queen who launches an attack on Lancre to re-assert her dominance over the world of man and the only things standing in her way are the witches and the seemingly-comical forces they can rally behind them…
What follows is one of the most wonderful and hilarious battles in all of Fantasy. My own personal favourite moment is the fight between a platoon of elves and the Lancre Morris Men, led by Jason Ogg, which starts off as a distraction to stay alive then becomes unbearably tense until Jason engineers a strategy. Then there’s Magrat discovering a suit of armour made for the legendary Queen Ynci and realising that she might be able to tackle the elves as well.
But I also love the triumphs that Nanny and Granny have over the elves. They realise that a victory by the elves won’t just result in torture and death, but a step back into superstition and ignorance.
And they ain’t having that.
This is by far my favourite book about the witches. The characters interact wonderfully in a setting that Pratchett feels comfortable with exploring further and he tells a fantastic, thoughtful story as well. I mentioned last time that I found Small Gods somewhat lacking in the comedy stakes: Lords And Ladies more than makes up for but, because it doesn’t specifically nail its colours to a particular theme beyond superstition and ignorance – disorganised religion, I suppose you could refer to some of it as – it’s never really had the same kind of impact on the wider world. However, it explores the same idea that Pratchett has discussed in nearly all of the Discworld books since at least The Light Fantastic: that by giving up our independence to an idea, we are sacrificing our individuality.
Coming Up Next: Captain Sam Vimes is dealing with a murder mystery, an enlarged squad of watchmen, an assassin and his own impending wedding in Men At Arms
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