MurderByDeath
Written on Aug 14, 2018
Brought to you by Penguin.
'No one mixes the fantastical and mundane to better comic effect or offers sharper insights into the absurdities of modern endeavour' Daily Mail
The Discworld is very much like our own - if our own were to consist of a flat planet balanced on the back of four elephants which stand on the back of a giant turtle, that is . . .
Fairy godmothers develop a very deep understanding about human nature, which makes the good ones kind and the bad ones powerful.
Inheriting a fairy godmother role seemed an easy job . . . After all, how difficult could it be to make sure that a servant girl doesn't marry a prince?
Quite hard, actually, even for the witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick. That's the problem with real life - it tends to get in the way of a good story, and a good story is hard to resist.
Servant girls have to marry the prince, whether they want to or not. You can't fight a Happy Ending, especially when it comes with glass slippers and a rival Fairy Godmother who has made Destiny an offer it can't refuse.
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The Discworld novels can be read in any order but Witches Abroad is the third book in the Witches series.
© Terry Pratchett 1991 (P) Penguin Audio 2007
- ISBN10 1407033018
- ISBN13 9781407033013
- Publish Date 4 January 2007 (first published 7 November 1991)
- Publish Status Permanently Withdrawn
- Out of Print 27 April 2022
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd
- Imprint Transworld Digital
- Edition Unabridged edition
- Format Audiobook (MP3)
- Duration 8 hours and 24 minutes
- Language English
Reviews
brokentune
Written on Sep 6, 2016
‘That’s right,’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘We’ve got a wand, too,’ said Magrat.
‘But you hate godmothers, Mistress Weatherwax,’ said Mrs Gogol.
‘We’re the other kind,’ said Granny. ‘We’re the kind that gives people what they know they really need, not what we think they ought to want.’
The witches - Granny, Nanny, and Magrat - are being sent on a mission: the ward of Desidarata needs help to free herself from the malevolent influence of a mysterious force - it's to do with mirrors and frogs and glas slippers, and zombies.
None of the witches have ever been abroad, and as they make their way across the Discworld, mayham lies in their wake, but what is worse....some people have no respect for witches!
‘They treated us as if we was ordinary people,’ said Granny, in a shocked voice.
Witches Abroad was a lot of fun but there was something missing for me in this one. It was funny and cute, and at times dark, really dark - they killed a wolf out of mercy - but there was still something that I enjoyed better in Wyrd Sisters. Maybe it was the lack of a fairy tale setting that appealed more to me.
layawaydragon
Written on Aug 14, 2012
I think one of the best things about Terry Pratchett and Discworld, is that nobody is excluded or discriminated against. It's not racist or sexist, or transphobic. It's not stereotypes. Pratchett punches up, not down. I love Pratchett's view of the world.
This book is incredibly funny, literally laugh out loud at several times.
The hilarious side notes:
page 2;
And instead of getting on with proper science.*
*like finding that bloody butterfly whose flapping wings cause all the storms we've been having lately and getting it to stop.
Another one on page 5:
"somehow no-one had the time to and correct the spelling.*
*Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Ybi was once cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Ybi are renowned for being unusually short and bad-tempered.
Conversaion between Granny, Nanny, and Magrat about Magrat wearing pants on pages of 27:
'I don't 'old with it,' said Granny. 'Everyone can see her legs.'
'No, they can't,' said Nanny. 'The reason being, the material is in the way.'
'Yes, but they can see where her legs are,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'That's silly. That's like saying everyone's naked under their clothes,' said Magrat.
'Magrat Garlick, may you be forgiven,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'Well, it's true!'
'I'm not,' said Granny flatly, ' I got three vests on.'
Sadly, there are plenty of fundamentalist religious followers who've made the same argument about women wearing pants, when it's all a thin veil on a way to collar, dominate and control women.
Another side note, this one about the nature of dwarfs and pronouns on page 32:
*Many of the more traditional dwarf tribes have no female pronouns, like 'she' or 'her'. It follows that the courtship of dwarfs is an incredibly tactful affair.
Another interesting, funny and insightful side note about "explorers discovering" a waterfall, on page 41
*Of course, lots of dwarfs, trolls, native people, trappers, hunters and the merely badly lost had discovered it on an almost daily basis for thousands of years. But they weren't explorers and didn't count.