Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett, a sharp early Discworld novel with real bite

Pratchett’s third Discworld book still feels like an origin point, not just for the series, but for one of its best recurring threads. Equal Rites is where the witches really begin to matter, and reading it now, after seeing how that side of Discworld develops, it is fascinating to watch him lay the foundations in real time.

The premise is classic Pratchett. A wizard’s staff ends up in the wrong hands, or depending on your point of view, the right ones. Eskarina Smith is born with a talent that the world insists should belong to boys, and the book gets a lot of mileage out of that simple idea without ever turning into a lecture. It is funny, pointed, and just irritated enough with the stupidity of old systems to give the story some proper energy.

What stands out most is Granny Weatherwax. She is not quite the fully evolved force of nature she becomes later, but she is already wonderfully spiky, practical, suspicious of nonsense, and far more formidable than most of the supposedly important men around her. Watching her navigate a world of wizardly rules and assumptions is half the fun. You can see Pratchett working out the shape of a character who will become one of the absolute best in the whole series.

This is also one of those early Discworld novels where the world still feels a bit loose around the edges, in a good way. The magic is stranger, the satire is broader, and the story has more of that slightly chaotic fairy tale logic the first few books run on. If later Discworld becomes a beautifully engineered machine, Equal Rites is closer to a clever bonfire, lively, unpredictable, and occasionally a bit rough in how it burns.

That roughness is probably why it lands at a four rather than a five for me. It is smart and memorable, but it does not quite have the precision or emotional depth Pratchett reaches later once the witches books really hit their stride. A few sections feel more like set-up than payoff, and Esk herself is sometimes overshadowed by the bigger personalities around her. Still, even the slight unevenness is interesting when you know what comes next, because you can see the series discovering one of its strongest voices.

If you like fantasy that pokes at the genre while still clearly loving it, this is easy to recommend. It sits somewhere between a parody of wizard school traditions and a folklore-soaked challenge to who gets to hold power in fantasy worlds at all. If your favourite Discworld books are the polished later ones, this is a reminder that Pratchett was already asking the right questions very early on, he just had not fully sharpened every tool yet.

Rating: 4/5

The Audible UK edition is narrated by Indira Varma, with footnotes by Bill Nighy and runs to about 6 hours.