Terry Pratchett’s elves have no redeeming
qualities; they are vicious, cruel, malevolent and dangerous to humans. I have
quoted some of the things that he says about them in an article featuring
energy vampires .
Jonathan Stroud says similar things about his
ghosts. They are malevolent and dangerous to the living. There is nothing good
to say about them.
Terry Pratchett’s elves enter the world
through gaps in the defences, through what could be described as weak points in
the barrier between Fairyland and the Discworld; the ghosts too enter via
windows or portals, spots where the barrier between this world and the next has
grown thin.
Both the elves and the ghosts cause their
victims to experience terrible feelings; they may even lose the will to live.
It takes the Discworld witches to deal
successfully with the elves; in the alternative London of the Lockwood series, only
children and teenagers with certain psychic talents are able to detect, deal
with and destroy the ghosts.
