Wyrd Sisters — Discworld, Book 6

Wyrd Sisters Review

Wyrd Sisters introduces the three Lancre witches — Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick — as a fully formed ensemble, and with them it launches what many readers consider Discworld’s best subseries. Pratchett had included Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites, but here she arrives in her definitive form: ferociously competent, deeply moral, and constitutionally unwilling to admit that she has any feelings whatsoever.

The plot riffs explicitly on Shakespeare. A king is murdered by his ambitious lord and lady, the infant heir is passed to a travelling acting company by a dying soldier, and the witches find themselves implicated in regicide they did not commit. The Macbeth parallels are unavoidable and intentional — but Pratchett layers in Hamlet, King Lear, and a sustained meditation on the nature of narrative itself. The question the novel keeps returning to is whether stories can have power over events, whether the land itself can remember what happened to it, and whether three women with no interest in politics can avoid becoming the instruments of history’s plot.

What makes Wyrd Sisters remarkable is how deftly it balances its comic and serious registers. Nanny Ogg’s vulgarity and Magrat’s earnest new-age enthusiasms generate sustained comedy. But Granny’s understanding of power — that real power often means not using it — gives the novel a moral backbone that earns the emotional weight of its final act. The scene in which the witches accelerate time by fifteen years is conceptually audacious and handled with the lightest touch.

Reading Order

Wyrd Sisters is the first true Witches novel and an excellent Discworld entry point. It is followed by Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, Carpe Jugulum, and the Tiffany Aching novels.

What Distinguishes This Book

Among the qualities that set Wyrd Sisters apart: Granny Weatherwax arrives in her definitive form — ferociously competent, deeply moral, constitutionally incapable of admitting feelings; The Shakespearean riff layers Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear simultaneously without becoming a parody exercise; Balances comic and serious registers with extraordinary skill — the comedy never undercuts the moral weight; and The time-acceleration set piece is conceptually audacious and handled with a lightness of touch that makes it look easy. These strengths are evident from the first pages and sustain across the whole work.

Themes

The thematic concerns of Wyrd Sisters give it weight beyond its surface narrative. Real power often means knowing when not to use it — Granny’s understanding of power is the novel’s moral center. Stories have power over events: narratives that a community tells about itself can shape what actually happens. The land remembers what happened to it — place and history are not separable. Three women of radically different temperaments working together can achieve what none could manage alone. Political murder produces a debt that the narrative itself insists on collecting, regardless of what the murderers prefer. These ideas emerge from the texture of the work rather than explicit statement, which is the mark of ambitious fiction done well.

Series Context

By 6 in the series, Terry Pratchett has built enough world and character depth to sustain a story that would be impossible in a standalone. The accumulated reader investment pays off here: stakes feel genuine because the world feels real. The book does what good middle-series entries must — it satisfies on its own terms while clearly advancing toward a larger conclusion.

Limitations

Readers who have not encountered Shakespearean tragedy will miss several layers of the joke. Magrat is somewhat underdeveloped here relative to what she becomes in later Witches novels. The political plot around the king’s murder is a vehicle more than a story in its own right. These are worth knowing before starting, though they are unlikely to diminish the experience for the readers the book is written for.

The Sixth Discworld Novel

Wyrd Sisters was published in November 1988 as the sixth Discworld novel and the second to feature the witches, following Equal Rites (1987). It established Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg as a permanent ensemble, added Magrat Garlick as the third member of the coven, and set the template for the Witches subseries that would continue through Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, Carpe Jugulum, and beyond.

Shakespeare in Discworld

Wyrd Sisters is the Discworld novel most explicitly in dialogue with Shakespeare — primarily Macbeth (a king murdered by his ambitious subordinate, with witches presiding over the consequences), with elements of Hamlet (a king’s ghost, an heir in exile, a troupe of travelling players used to reveal a crime) and King Lear (the old king, the succession, the heath). Pratchett’s relationship with Shakespeare throughout the series is that of a writer who takes the originals seriously enough to argue with them: the witches in Wyrd Sisters are not the vague instruments of fate they are in Macbeth but practical women with specific ethical positions, who find the role that history has cast them in — agents of doom, presences at moments of crisis — as uncomfortable as it is unavoidable. The novel was adapted for the stage by Stephen Briggs, whose adaptations of multiple Discworld novels have been performed worldwide.

The Discworld series ran to forty-one novels between 1983 and 2015, and the Witches sub-series that Wyrd Sisters launched produced some of its finest and most emotionally enduring work.

Final Verdict

Our rating: 4.5/5 — The novel that introduced Granny Weatherwax to the world in her full form: Pratchett’s deconstruction of Shakespearean tragedy is both funnier and more philosophically interesting than it has any right to be, and the Witches subseries it launches is the most emotionally resonant strand in Discworld.