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Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
4.0

A series of reviews part 20.

The witches are in Ankh Morpork to locate their friend Agnes Nitt from Lancre who has run away to become an opera singer. Pratchett uses a Phantom of the Opera parody to explore opera (naturally), music, the theater, and backstage culture. He gets a few digs in at the publishing industry and makes a lot of cracks about creative businesses that also need to get creative with their accounting (still relevant in the movie industry if you ask me). While this one didn't have a ton of big laughs for me, it's very smart. There's a screwball comedy's pace to Nanny Ogg and Esme Weatherwax in the big city, but it's foremost a book about opera. With previous Discworld books: rock n' roll sure, the golden age of Hollywood, ok. But opera? I love it anyway. Nanny Ogg and Esme are my girls and anything they want to do is fine. There's no Magrat at all, as Agnes Nitt is the new third here. She's a pretty good character, her perfect voice is a cool power, but it's not the same and the witches tend to repeat a lot of the old jokes. It's good though, really really good, but compared to Wyrd Sisters, it's not going to be AS good.

Agnes finds herself as a comically large ingenue at an opera house amid a financial crisis and change of ownership. She has some of those latent witch powers from Lancre and a magical vocal range that can do anything. But the new owner's pretty, thin, blonde daughter is cast instead. Agnes finds herself "filling in" for the other singer's deficiencies without the credit. There's a phantom too, and the story goes in a delightful melodrama direction. There are presumably many references to famous operas. I really don't know however, I'm not even a Shakespeare expert! I've heard OF famous operas, but it's the behind-the-scenes theater stuff that works the most for me.

The early plot concerning the cookbook was funny but it runs out of steam by the climax when they join the main plot. Nanny sends in a cookbook to be published, only its special sexy recipes for lewd sex magic lovers called The Joy of Snacks. Of course, it's an instant best-seller. When Nanny receives a handful of dollars and a thank you note in response, Esme takes her to learn the virtue of a creator asserting their rights to royalties. The subplot starts strong but the mysterious recipe names and lewd puns got a little repetitive. Another sophisticated bawdy entry in general like Lords and Ladies of which this is about equal.

But, something was missing for me. Maybe it's the fat jokes. Agnes is described as a very large woman, and it's true enough for opera I suppose, so Pratchett is using the subject and the more feminist witch series themes to explore weight. And I'm reminded of way back in Guards! Guards! when Lady Ramkin had to be the subject of dozens of fat jokes just to credibly imply that Vimes wouldn't be instantly attracted to her. But this book is a little more nuanced, it's six years and ten books later (!). But I think it had a hard time finding a balance with some of the jokes. Overall, Pratchett gets into the assumptions society makes about weight in a way that, in my opinion, was very PC for the time but seems sort of clunky now.

It's a good theater book! A nice theater comedy. There are quite a lot of jokes about Andrew Lloyd Webber. For me personally, I knew I had this book but had zero memory of reading it, but then in doing so remembered various bits. It's hard to forget the banana surprise joke. So I was 14-15, and remember the book's messages about how weight is perceived as something I found thoughtful.