By Sir Terry Pratchett

Now we come to the fourth book of the Witches series.

“It’s Midsummer Night- no time for dreaming. Because sometimes, when there’s more than one reality at play, too much dreaming can make the walls between them come tumbling down. Unfortunately, there’s usually a damned good reason for there being walls between them in the first place- to keep them out. Things who want to make mischief and play havoc with the natural order.

Granny Weatherwax and her tiny coven are up against real elves. And even in a world with dwarfs, wizards, trolls, Morris dancers and the odd orang-utan, this is going to cause real trouble. With lots of hey-nonny-nonny and blood all over the place.”

This was a lot of fun, to see the 2nd Discworld take on a Shakespeare, in this case, a very loose take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But that being said, a slight word of warning, there are many Discworld books that you can pick up and read without having read any others. However, if you want to make sense of this one, you need to read Witches Abroad and maybe Wyrd Sisters.

For this book, I have three thoughts I would like to talk about.

Firstly, throughout the last two books, we have a look at what is considered a good ruler. In Wyrd Sisters, kings burning down cottages is seen as a thing that kings do; what is important is whether the king shows respect to the witches and if he loves the land. In Witches Abroad, we have an undead baron, who was a known bully and not a good person vs a frog that was turned into a human being, pupated by an evil godmother. Now we come to the King Verence of Lancre, a man who has been thrust into being king. In this book, we see that he views the kingdom as his master. He is truly trying to be a good king.

Secondly, so before I read this book, the only time I came across fairies was in children’s stories (where they are always good and helpful) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (where the fairies attempt to help the lovers and the one person who was harmed by fairies was put back to normal by morning). So this story hits me out of left field. The idea that these beings are so beautiful and powerful but they have no care for human pain. In fact, they find it fun. Also, the fact that they have something called glamour, which means they can mess with people’s minds so that humans will do what they want.

Thirdly, there are two humans who are not affected by the fairies’ glamour, those are Mr Brooks, the beekeeper and Hodges Arg, the falconer. Both these people are completely obsessed with the animals they care for. Maybe if you think completely about caring for animals then there is no room for brainwashing.

Thank you for reading this with me and until next time.

Happy reading to all and to all a good night.