kiwikathleen 's review for:

Maskerade by Terry Pratchett

5.0

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Once again there's the usual Pratchett combination of wit, slapstick, philosophy, political comment, wry commentary on human nature and sci-fi/fantasy - this time set at the Opera. And while I was reading I decided to remember some classic sentences (or two), so I took note:

He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body were being dragged forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. It wasn't so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely postponed.

Of course, Nanny Ogg could drink anything, but clever Pratchett calling a strong alcohol 'brain-death':

Just to keep bad dreams at bay, she took a swig out of a bottle that smelled of apples and happy brain-death.

Who but Pratchett would think of using the word ballistic to describe someone's singing?:

... Nanny Ogg, whose attitude to songs was purely ballistic. You just pointed your voice at the end of the verse and went for it.

Haven't we all done this?!:

'... Time creeps up behind you, all the . . .' He fumbled for a word, and settled lamely for 'Time. ...'

I have no idea if Pratchett ever enjoyed going to the opera, but he enjoys poking fun at it (as he does at so many things) - and what a very clever phrase at the end of this sentence:

The chorus was filing on to be A Busy Marketplace, in which various jugglers, gypsies, sword-swallowers and gaily dressed yokels would be entirely unsurprised at an apparently drunken baritone strolling on to sing an enormous amount of plot at a passing tenor.

Here he coins a new word and describes it perfectly:

There was a crash from the direction of the kitchen, although it was really more of a crashendo - the long-drawn-out clatter that begins when a pile of plates begins to slip, continues when someone tries to grab at them, develops a desperate counter-theme when the person realizes they don't have three hands, and ends with the roinroinroin of the one miraculously intact plate spinning round and round on the floor.

Finally, one about the mentality of a mob:

And since the IQ of a mob of the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters, it was never very clear to anyone what had happened.