Equal Rites (Discworld Series #3)

Equal Rites (Discworld Series #3)

by Terry Pratchett

Narrated by Tony Robinson

Abridged — 2 hours, 54 minutes

Equal Rites (Discworld Series #3)

Equal Rites (Discworld Series #3)

by Terry Pratchett

Narrated by Tony Robinson

Abridged — 2 hours, 54 minutes

Audiobook (Digital)

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Overview

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

There are some situations where the correct response is to display the sort of ignorance which happily and wilfully flies in the face of the facts. In this case, the birth of a baby girl, born a wizard — by mistake.

Everybody knows that there's no such thing as a female wizard. But now it's gone and happened, there's nothing much anyone can do about it. Let the battle of the sexes begin...


Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

 • The first seven Discworld titles are being reissued with stunning new covers, publication coincides with 21 years of Discworld anniversary and the hardback publication of The Celebrated Discworld Almanak and Going Postal.

 • "If you are unfamiliar with Pratchett's unique blend of philosophical badinage, you are on the threshold of a mind-expanding opportunity." —Financial Times

 • "Persistently amusing, good-hearted and shrewd." —The Sunday Times

 • "Pratchett keeps getting better and better... It's hard to think of any humorist writing in Britain today who can match him." —Time Out

DEC/JAN 99 - AudioFile

This novel from the Discworld science fiction series is a fun combination of fantasy with modern-day allusions. The reader brings a distinctive style and rhythm that suits the tale. The dry humor and tongue-in-cheek asides play well in the audio format. Celia Imrie portrays a young girl who believes she can become a wizard and an aging crone who is wise to the chauvinistic world of magic. The crone is a bit ragged and harsh in tone, fitting stereotypes concerning the village witch. In contrast, the young girl sounds as innocent and trusting as her character appears to be. An echo chamber effect is tried two or three times, adding little but not overly distracting either. J.E.M. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID: 2940169129632
Publisher: Random House UK
Publication date: 01/04/2007
Series: Discworld Series
Edition description: Abridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesh't pretend to answer all or any of these questions.

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.

However, it is primarily a story about a world. Here it comes now. Watch closely, the special effects are quite expensive.

A bass note sounds. It is a deep, vibrating chord that hints that the brass section may break in at any moment with a fanfare for the cosmos, because the scene is the blackness of deep space with a few stars glittering like the dandruff on the shoulders of God.

Then it comes into view overhead, bigger than the biggest, most unpleasantly armed starcruiser in the imagination of a three-ring filmmaker: a turtle, ten thousand miles long. It is Great A'Tuin, one of the rare astrochelonians from a universe where things are less as they are and more like people imagine them to be, and it carries on its meteorpocked shell four giant elephants who bear on their enormous shoulders the great round wheel of the Discworld.

As the viewpoint swings around, the whole of the world can be seen by the light of its tiny orbiting sun. There are continents, archipelagos, seas, deserts, mountain ranges and even a tiny central ice cap. The inhabitants of this place, it is obvious, won't have any truck with global theories. Their world, bounded by anencircling ocean that falls forever into space in one long waterfall, is as round and flat as a geological pizza, although without the anchovies.

A world like that, which exists only because the gods enjoy a joke, must be a place where magic can survive. And sex too, of course.

He came walking through the thunderstorm and you could tell he was a wizard, partly because of the long cloak and carven staff but mainly because the raindrops were stopping several feet from his head, and steaming.

It was good thunderstorm country, up here in the Ramtop Mountains, a country of jagged peaks, dense forests and little river valleys so deep the daylight had no sooner reached the bottom than it was time to leave again. Ragged wisps of cloud clung to the lesser peaks below the mountain trail along which the wizard slithered and slid. A few slot-eyed goats watched him with mild interest. It doesn't take a lot to Interest goats.

Sometimes he would stop and throw his heavy staff into the air. It always came down pointing the same way and the wizard would sigh, pick it up, and continue his squelchy progress.

The storm walked around the hills on legs of lightning, shouting and grumbling.

The wizard disappeared around the bend in the track and the goats went back to their damp grazing.

Until something else caused them to look up. They stiffened, their eyes widening, their nostrils flaring.

This was strange, because there was nothing on the path. But the goats still watched it pass by until it was out of sight.

There was a village tucked in a narrow valley between steep woods. It wasn't a large village, and wouldn't have shown up on a map of the mountains. It barely showed up on a map of the village.

It was, in fact, one of those places that exist merely so that people can have come from them. The universe is littered with them: hidden villages, windswept little towns under wide sides, isolated cabins on chilly mountains, whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all gynecological probability someone very famous was born halfway up a wall.

Mist curled between the houses as the wizard crossed a narrow bridge over the swollen stream and made his way to the village smithy, although the two facts had nothing to do with one another. The mist would have curled anyway: it was experienced mist and had got curling down to a fine art.

The smithy was fairly crowded, of course. A smithy is one place where you can depend on finding a good fire and someone to talk to. Several villagers were lounging in the warm shadows but, as the wizard approached, they sat up expectantly and tried to look intelligent, generally with indifferent success.

The smith didn't feel the need to be quite so subservient.

He nodded at the wizard, but it was a greeting between equals, or at least between equals as far as the smith was concerned. After all, any halfway competent blacksmith has more than a nodding acquaintance with magic, or at least likes to think he has.

The wizard bowed. A white cat that had been sleeping by the furnace woke up and watched him carefully.

"What is the name of this place, sir?" said the wizard.

The blacksmith shrugged.

"Bad Ass," he said.

"Bad — ?"

"Ass," repeated the blacksmith, his tone defying anyone to make something of it.

The wizard considered this.

"A name with a story behind it," he said at last, "which were circumstances otherwise I would be pleased to hear. But I would like to speak to you, smith, about your son."

"Which one?" said the smith, and the hangers-on sniggered. The wizard smiled.

"You have seven sons, do you not? And you yourself were an eighth son?"

The smith's face stiffened. He turned to the other villagers.

"All right, the rain's stopping," he said. "Piss off, the lot of you. Me and — " he looked at the wizard with raised eyebrows.

"Drum Billet," said the wizard.

"Me and Mr. Billet have things to talk about." He waved his hammer vaguely and, one after another, craning over their shoulders in case the wizard did anything interesting, the audience departed.

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