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This was my second Terry Pratchett book (since reading his collaboration with Neil Gaiman on Good Omens way back when I was in college), and my first foray into the Discworld series. My impressions are mixed, overall. On the one hand, the late Pratchett had very inventive and funny prose, and many scenes in Wyrd Sisters would be at home in Monty Python and the Holy Grail for their light-hearted absurdity. On the other, I found the plot and characterization often suffered for the sake of punchlines, and this disappointed me. Comedy writing is very hit-and-miss for me, and there were a lot more misses here than I would have expected for a series that has been so praised.

Wyrd Sisters revolves around the kingdom of Lancre in the Discworld, where witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick have made their coven. There is murder most foul afoot in the nearby castle, as the king is assassinated and his infant son winds up in the care of the witches. Hijinks ensue start to finish. I appreciated the nods to Macbeth and the incorporation of Shakespearean theatre in a fantasy setting (something I haven't seen much of in other works in the genre), but I found the plot anywhere from predictable to nonsensical. I could tell right away I should not expect much realism from this tale, but there were still a few moments that truly challenged my willing suspension of disbelief (view spoiler)[particularly when the witches decided they could just fly around the kingdom on brooms and shoot fifteen years into the future, so that Tomjon would be old enough to be king, but no one else would age? Whaaaaat? (hide spoiler)].

The characters similarly often felt like caricatures. This was fine for some of them (the evil duke and duchess were delightfully wacky in their villainy), but tried my patience with others. While I enjoyed Granny and Nanny for being old ladies with gumption, I felt bad for young, poor Magrat, whom the omniscient narrator frequently mined for jokes � the joke being she's got no boobies, everyone! Har har har. I guess that sort of thing was funny in the 80s? It just made me uncomfortable after the second or third time, and was dismayed that it kept coming up for the entirety of the novel. Magrat is easily the smartest and most pure-hearted of the cast, and to see that diminished by being openly mocked for her appearance � not by other characters, but the author himself � was disheartening. (view spoiler)[And she doesn't even get the guy in the end? The guy she personally put on the throne? #JusticeForMagrat, my friends. (Okay, okay, I know the ending is a bit ambiguous and maybe they eventually get together, since the Fool ends up asleep in her cottage waiting for her, but the fact that the novel ends before resolving this felt like a cop-out.) (hide spoiler)]

I've read that Discworld has 41 books in its series and Terry Pratchett used to churn them out twice a year. If Wyrd Sisters is indicative of its quality, I can see why. There's not all that much substantive here. The "lore" of the Discworld felt very uh, new-agey? Which I suppose matches the time in which it was written, but didn't exactly offer me a fresh perspective on the fantasy genre. The rules of magic are similarly hand-wavy, i.e. easily bent to plot convenience. I dunno. I know many absolutely love this series, and I suspect part of my problem is I've been exposed to many, many derivative works (I could suddenly feel Pratchett's presence in everything from Harry Potter to Joss Whedon to Futurama to even the animation of the Grim Reaper in The Sims 2, tapping his hour glass and waiting for your sim to shuffle off its mortal coil), but so much of this book just felt like old, well-trodden ground. Much like Good Omens, I suspect I will remember this book being vaguely funny, often confusing, and forget the details almost immediately.

I doubt I will bother returning to the Discworld in the future.