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A review by tfitoby
Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
4.0
So great to get back to a book with Pratchett doing what he did best after the poor punfest that was Soul Music and the silly adventures of Rincewind in Interesting Times, Maskerade is about the witches and you can't go wrong with Granny and Nanny running riot with things.
Nanny is sick of making the tea, Granny is bored, they need a third (junior) witch to complete their coven and they need adventures to stave off the craziness that can envelope the mind of a bored yet powerful witch (see the adventures of Black Alice for case in point.) It just so happens that their preferred witch Agnes (Perditax) Nitt has run off to the big smoke to join the opera, an operation currently haunted by a murderous ghost. Hijinks ensues.
The major difference between the witches books and the Rincewind books is that first and foremost Pratchett is concerned with telling an interesting and entertaining story about great characters as opposed to squeezing as many jokes per page as possible with a "plot" a secondary or tertiary requirement of the book. Granny and Nanny ARE great characters, they have interesting adventures and the stories are generally reused, reimagined, re-buggered about with, classics of literature i.e. established high quality structure with a fair bit of cunning imagination thrown in to the mix. Maskerade's take on The Phantom of the Opera is no exception to this, and there are still countless jokes that come naturally from the evolution of the characters and plot rather than slapstick humour forced in to scenarios as part of an unacknowledged joke quota.
The promotion of Agnes from a minor character in Lords and Ladies to bone fide replacement for Queen Magrat Garlick is handled marvellously, life is breathed in to her previous caricature with nonchalant ease, bringing a new dynamic to Pratchett's world - a female character that is allowed to just exist on her own for a time without solely being a plot device or a two dimensional villain or a sounding board for Granny etc.
Looking ahead at the rest of the series I think it's fair to say that this is the point where Pratchett became fully in control of his abilities with the pen and grasped the power of the world he had created over the past decade and Maskerade is a good example of what was to come.
Nanny is sick of making the tea, Granny is bored, they need a third (junior) witch to complete their coven and they need adventures to stave off the craziness that can envelope the mind of a bored yet powerful witch (see the adventures of Black Alice for case in point.) It just so happens that their preferred witch Agnes (Perditax) Nitt has run off to the big smoke to join the opera, an operation currently haunted by a murderous ghost. Hijinks ensues.
The major difference between the witches books and the Rincewind books is that first and foremost Pratchett is concerned with telling an interesting and entertaining story about great characters as opposed to squeezing as many jokes per page as possible with a "plot" a secondary or tertiary requirement of the book. Granny and Nanny ARE great characters, they have interesting adventures and the stories are generally reused, reimagined, re-buggered about with, classics of literature i.e. established high quality structure with a fair bit of cunning imagination thrown in to the mix. Maskerade's take on The Phantom of the Opera is no exception to this, and there are still countless jokes that come naturally from the evolution of the characters and plot rather than slapstick humour forced in to scenarios as part of an unacknowledged joke quota.
The promotion of Agnes from a minor character in Lords and Ladies to bone fide replacement for Queen Magrat Garlick is handled marvellously, life is breathed in to her previous caricature with nonchalant ease, bringing a new dynamic to Pratchett's world - a female character that is allowed to just exist on her own for a time without solely being a plot device or a two dimensional villain or a sounding board for Granny etc.
Looking ahead at the rest of the series I think it's fair to say that this is the point where Pratchett became fully in control of his abilities with the pen and grasped the power of the world he had created over the past decade and Maskerade is a good example of what was to come.