Equal Rites

Title: Equal Rites
Author(s): Terry Pratchett
Release year: 1987
Publisher: Victor Gollancz in association with Colin Smythe

Why in Database: As will be the case many times with the discworld books, A’tuin appears right at the beginning, with an interesting reference to Star Wars:

Then it comes into view overhead, bigger than the biggest, most unpleasantly armed starcruiser in the imagination of a three-ring filmmaker: a turtle, ten thousand miles long. It is Great A’Tuin, one of the rare astrochelonians from a universe where things are less as they are and more like people imagine them to be, and it carries on its meteor-pocked shell four giant elephants who bear on their enormous shoulders the great round wheel of the Discworld.

Another mention of A’Tuin:

That wasn’t poetic imagery but plain fact, since the world was quite definitely flat and was, furthermore, known to be carried through space on the backs of four elephants that in turn stood on the shell of Great A’Tuin, the Great Sky Turtle.

For a change, turtle mention is more neutral – it is about fact, that the quilt does not look like a quilt:

(…) since he wasn’t much good at sewing either, the result was a rather strange lumpy thing more like a flat tortoise than a quilt (…)

Later, A’tuin appears again, in the form of an illumination/projection that is created by one of the heroes, at the university:

That was quite clear, although the glitter and rush of the little lights blurred some of the detail. But there was Great A’Tuin the sky turtle, with the four Elephants on its back, and on them the Disc itself. There was the sparkle of the great waterfall around the edge of the world, and there at the very hub a tiny needle of rock that was the great mountain Cori Celesti, where the gods lived.

Once again, A’tuin is mentioned when Esk wanders out of her body and wonders whether or not to borrow a great turtle’s mind (Granny Weatherwax taught her the ability to borrow animal minds), but she decides, that it’s a bad idea:

It also lit up Great A’Tuin the World Turtle. Esk had often wondered if the Turtle was really a myth. It seemed a lot of trouble to go to just to move a world. But there It was, almost as big as the Disc It carried, frosted with stardust and pocked with meteor craters.
Its head passed in front of her and she looked directly into an eye big enough to float all the fleets in the world. She had heard it said that if you could look far enough into the direction that Great A’Tuin was staring, you would see the end of the universe. Maybe it was just the set of Its beak, but Great A’Tuin looked vaguely hopeful, even optimistic. Perhaps the end of everything wasn’t as bad as all that.
Dreamlike, she reached out and tried to Borrow the biggest mind in the universe.
She stopped herself just in time, like a child with a toy toboggan who expected a little gentle slope and suddenly looks out of the magnificent mountains, snow-covered, stretching into the icefields of infinity. No one would ever Borrow that mind, it would be like trying to drink all the sea. The thoughts that moved through it were as big and as slow as glaciers.

The last mention is when the main character is in other dimension than the discworld, and there she sees the entire discworld with A’Tuin, etc., locked in a glass pyramid:

He was holding a small glass pyramid. There were stars in it, and occasionally he would give it a little shake so that the stars swirled up like snow in the wind, and then settled back in their places. Then he would giggle.
And beyond the stars…
It was the Discworld. A Great A’Tuin no bigger than a small saucer toiled along under a world that looked like the work of an obsessive jeweler.

Jak widać, jest parę wzmianek o żółwiu, choć mniej niż w poprzednich tomach, gdzie jego natura była bardziej przybliżona.

Author: XYuriTT

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