A “wossname” good time! Wyrd Sisters is Terry Pratchett’s parody of Shakespeare in which he takes Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear and gives them the Discworld treatment. In this novel, the witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick get involved in politics (which witches really shouldn’t do!) after an evil duke murders his cousin, the king of Lancre.
The plot itself is a fairly straightforward mashup of the aforementioned Shakespeare works, but where Wyrd Sisters packs a punch is in its characters, worldbuilding, and humor. The more Discworld I read, the more impressed I am with Pratchett’s ability to make this absurd world feel so lived in and packed with little details. In almost every one of the six entries I have read so far, he finds a different way to describe the Disc’s geography, politics, and the city of Ankh-Morpork. It would be easy to discount Pratchett because of Discworld’s silliness, but as Wyrd Sisters shows, the man had a deep comprehension of literature, the English language, and human nature.
Even when the story itself is merely passable, it’s worth reading these books to spend time with the characters. The diversions to Tomjohn’s theater troupe in Ankh Morpork are definitely the weak point in this novel, but the time spent with the witches and the other denizens of the bleak kingdom of Lancre was time well-spent. The scene where Nanny Ogg is being tortured in the castle dungeon is hilarious, her pet cat Greebo is the ultimate hyperbolic depiction of a witch’s black cat, and the contrast between Ogg’s raunchiness and Granny’s propriety makes for hilarious banter. The Fool serves as a perfect vessel for Pratchett to poke fun at Shakespeare’s archaic prose. The fact that none of the other characters can understand The Fool when he says “n’uncle,” “i’faith,” and “prithee” is hilarious and deeply relatable to anyone who struggled with Shakespeare in school.
Six books in (in publication order), Wyrd Sisters is a close second only to Mort in my Discworld journey thus far.
The Once and Future Lit 