Celia Imrie Books

A wonderful version if you cannot watch this on the telly. I enjoy listening to Victoria Wood, Julie Walters, and all these wonderful "daft bats" on the cd player!!!! If you are familiar with this show, you will certainly enjoy these cds! Buying the scripts are also well worth it! I truly wish Victoria Wood made more....but they ended the second series with a very happy ending!!!! Enjoy!!

My sister and I have long enjoyed theses stories. They are classic (or not so classic)fairy tales with a twist. Intriguing and imaginative characters, a witty and fresh storyline. Some of the details are highly improbable, but these stories are very creative, well told and extremely enterprising.

Terry Pratchett has become one of the most popular authors alive today and his popularity is richly deserved. But not even with his fertile mind could ever have envisaged the heights to which his Discworld series would rise. This book was first published in 1988 and is number six in the Discworld novels.

You would think that a fantasy world full of trolls, zombies, witches, vampires would be an alien concept to most readers. Werewolves and dwarves in the Ank Morpork city watch. Wizards running a university. All this born in the mind of one of the funniest minds writing today. Surely this style of writing would have a limited readership? But no the books are loved by anybody and everybody and are read by people who would not normally allow fantasy fiction anywhere near their book shelves. This is the Discworld of Terry Pratchett.

In this episode Granny Weatherwax and her fellow coven members are meddling in politics, the royal kind, which Granny Weatherwax thinks is the worst kind of all. The Wyrd sisters as they are known battle to put the right king on the right throne, at least that's the general idea. After all what are witches for . . .

Meet Granny, Nanny, and Margrat, the three witches of the Ramtop Mountains. They meet on a rainy night and are saddled with an infant prince and a Shakespearean drama of the highest magnitude. Pratchett takes his three magical ladies out for their first real spin and sets his sights on MacBeth. Grand satire and fantastic characters that leave one grinning as the pages turn. Let Nanny summon a demon using old soap flakes and a wooden spoon, or Granny to use "headology", or Magrat to make the tea and fall in love and the world will be a scary, but funny place indeed.

First let me say that, as with all Terry Pratchett's other books that I read, I liked this one, but not as much as I liked Guards! Guards! I am sure that Wyrd Sisters had, at some level, a deeper meaning than was obvious to me. I don't view the Discworld stories as satires, although they may be, I just want some time to escape from Earth. And this book filled the bill. The main characters were well developed and the book was overall a very good read. I look forward to reading many more of his stories, although I am not calling my travel agent to book a visit to Ankh Morpork.

I almost gave this 4 stars, but the more I thought about it, the less satisfying it became.

Wyrd Sisters is a mildly amusing parody of Macbeth, with shades of Hamlet tossed in as well. I was actually reminded of "Rosenkrantz and Gildestern are dead" by Stoppard, which tells the story of Hamlet through two very minor characters wandering around the background during key scenes and soliloquies. Sadly, Wyrd Sisters wasn't as inventive.

The story has some good chuckles, but none of the laugh-out-loud moments that pepper Pratchett's other works. Also missing are cameos from the vast pantheon of enjoyable minor charcters in the Discworld milieu. My major problem, though, involves a...

***MINOR SPOILER***

About half way through, it becomes necessary to age one of the central characters (the rightful heir to the throne) by 15 years so he can return and claim his birthright. Pratchett's method for this was wholely unconvincing, and even he seemed embarrased by the awkwardness of it all, based on some comments that appear after the fact. I realize it needed to be done, but it just didn't sit right with me.

***END MINOR SPOILERS***

If you like Pratchett, and especially the Lancre Witches arc of his writing, then you'll probably enjoy Wyrd Sisters. Personally, I don't think it's one of his better efforts, though I'm glad I read it from a "completionist" standpoint.

Terry Pratchett has created an entirely ridiculous and enjoyable world with his Discworld novels. It is a world peopled by the inhabitants of fantasy and science fiction, with events not often too far removed from what happens in the 'real' world. Yet Pratchett's writing seems to be at its strongest when he is working from other sources and not from his uniquely own material. Such is the case with "Wyrd Sisters", a sendup of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' and many of his other plays.

When the king of Lancre suddenly finds himself dead, and witnesses the duke who killed him to gain his throne, he is at a complete loss on how to cope with being dead, as well as how to seek revenge. He seeks out the local Ramtop witches, commonly known as Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick to help him out. The witches are not meant to interfere with destiny, but find themselves involved when the king's young son is dropped into their hands. They find a home for him among a traveling band of players and try not to interfere as the new duke makes a royal mess of the kingdom. But when the witches become hunted due to terrible false rumors, the three are forced to take matters into their own hands.

"Wyrd Sisters" is a delightful mixing of Pratchett's unique sense of humor and various Shakespearean tales, for fans will recognize other plays that make an appearance - especially a play designed to make a murderous king confess to wrongdoing. Pratchett is in his element when satirizing or making parodies of well-known works, and seems much more comfortable messing around with others' works than in his own skin, which is just fine for fans of Shakespeare and the Discworld.

I bought this book as a gift. As far as I know, it was exactly what was wanted and the person is very happy that received it.

Terry Pratchett has become one of the most popular authors alive today and his popularity is richly deserved. But not even with his fertile mind could he ever have envisaged the heights to which his Discworld series would rise. This book first published in 1987 is the third of the Discworld novels and the author is really getting into his stride in the series that broke all records and continues to do so with new books being regularly published.

Pratchett's wit and imagination are second to none. Who else would have or could have thought of the Discworld, a world of mystery and magic sitting on the back of four elephants, who in turn are standing on the back of the great turtle A'tuin the whole lot journeying through an eternal void. Are you with the plot so far?

Wizard's have the uncanny knack of being able to predict their own death, or so thinks Drum Billet. Having seen his own demise rapidly approaching he sets out to pass his power and his staff on to his predicted successor, who as tradition would have it, has to be the eighth son of an eight son. The only problem with this is that the eighth son just happens to be a daughter and whoever heard of a woman becoming a wizard. But it's too late Drum Billet has gone to wherever dead wizards go and Eskarina has inherited a wizard's staff and is under the doubtful tutelage of Granny Weatherwax, who reckons this being a wizard is as easy as falling off a broomstick . . .

One of Pratchett's early books, and our first sighting of Granny Weatherwax. Unfortunately, without Nanny Ogg or Magrat she is left 2-dimensional and lifeless on the page. Much like "Guards, Guards" the book has the felling of not knowing what it wants to be and the characters don't know who they are. The face off against sex discrimination in the wizarding world might make for an interesting story, but if it does you'd have to look for it in another book, this one's dull (for Pratchett).

It's a fact of life on Discworld that wizards are always men and witches are always women, and most of both wouldn't have it any other way. But that was before a certain eighth son of an eighth son, imbued at birth with magical powers by a dying wizard, turns out to be a daughter instead. Granny Weatherwax, the local witch (and whose first appearance in the series this is), tries to train young Eskarina as her own successor but finally realizes the girl will need the full training available only at Unseen University -- where no girl has ever been admitted. And on the way, she hooks up with Simon, a sort of wizardly Einstein -- who, along with Esk, is never seen again in the series. (Why?) This early in the Discworld series, Pratchett was still working out the details of his world, so that one can actually swim in the Ankh River (instead of walking across it, as in the later books), and various details of the University are also at variance with the later books. And it's not really clear what happens to Esk in the end. As always, it's all lots of fun, though.

Eskarina Smith was born with a slight impediment a wizard desperate to leave his staff to an heir was so delighted to find the eighth child of an eighth child neglected to make one last quality check. And so the first female wizard was born. Granny Weatherwax quickly realizes the magnitude of the problem - there was no one to teach Esk to manage wizardry that is exactly like handing a two-year-old the remote control to an armed nuclear submarine. Granny did her best by instructing Esk in witchery, but this was only a temporary diversion. If there was any hope for the wolves in Lancre, Esk must be sent to the Unseen University where, unfortunately, the most likely reaction to a girl who could cast spells was to make a maid out of her.

On the way she meets Simon, a young wizard on the way to the University to gain his staff. Simon's a bit unusual; he's self-taught with a theoretical bent at a time when the average wizard had trouble keeping his cigar lit. Simon's talent wasn't simply useful, it was downright dangerous. So with Esk trying to work her way past wizardly sexism, Simon getting closer and closer to accidentally releasing all hell, and vague hints of romance Pratchett does what he always seems to do and make theater of the Absurd into a literary phenomenon.

Deep down inside Pratchett is a true romantic warring with a soul that thinks everything is made from the blackest of cottage cheese. It always amazes me how he manages to keep a level of sarcasm, tell some horrendous puns, and still write a book that is every bit a whopping good story, with characters good and awful, but always charming. This is number three in the serious, and stands perfectly by itself, but reading all the books is compulsory anyway. You will enjoy all of them, like it or not.