Chris reviewed Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
None
5 stars
"When shall we three meet again?" the witches used to chorus. There are only two of them now, as Magrat Garlick has gone off to marry king Verence, and it wouldn�t suprise me if she turns into a bulimic avatar of Lady Di in a later volume of the witches� adventures. But there must be three; they are, after all, avatars of the three ages of woman, maiden, mother and... the other one; and besides it looks suspiciously like Granny Weatherwax, with no real outlet for her talents, may be turning from a good witch into a really unpleasant one, like Black Allis who lived in a house made of frogs and turned people into gingerbread (well, that�s what it says here...). The world of the Disc is, after all, a medieval one, and one where magic works, even if most of the time Granny and Nanny deny its existence …
"When shall we three meet again?" the witches used to chorus. There are only two of them now, as Magrat Garlick has gone off to marry king Verence, and it wouldn�t suprise me if she turns into a bulimic avatar of Lady Di in a later volume of the witches� adventures. But there must be three; they are, after all, avatars of the three ages of woman, maiden, mother and... the other one; and besides it looks suspiciously like Granny Weatherwax, with no real outlet for her talents, may be turning from a good witch into a really unpleasant one, like Black Allis who lived in a house made of frogs and turned people into gingerbread (well, that�s what it says here...). The world of the Disc is, after all, a medieval one, and one where magic works, even if most of the time Granny and Nanny deny its existence and put everything down to �headology�. A witch gone to the bad, especially one whom no-one dares disagree with anyway, would be no laughing matter...
With his finely-tuned sense of the preposterous it must have been inevitable that one fine day Terry Pratchett would turn his attention to that most preposterous and cod-mediaeval of artforms (apart from Fantasy itself) that is opera. Ankh-Morpork, which has often had something of turn-of-the-century Vienna about it, charm and corruption mingled uneasily, now has itself an Opera House, run by a man who used to be a cheese magnate, and where strange things are starting to happen backstage, and a mysterious masked figure is spotted high in the roof. He even sends manic laughter in finely-written notes to the manager. To this strange place comes one Agnes Nitt, a big girl with a huge voice: the kind of range that would have made Callas hide in a corner. Agnes is into wearing pale makeup and black lace gloves, being mysterious and interesting and calling herself Perdita X Dream, where the X stands for �someone with a really cool middle initial�. Unfortunately it doesn�t quite work, and she has to stand backstage while the pretty but bag-of-rocks dim Christine actually goes on stage and mimes to Agnes�s singing. Meanwhile Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are in town because Nanny wants paying her royalties for her bestselling �The Joye of Snacks�; and also arriving by the same coach is one Henry Slugg, who has spent years building up a career as tenor Enrico Basilica, having to eat spaghetti while yearning for meat pies and dumplings.
There are plenty of jokes, thankfully. Opera is described in a way that makes me think Terry must have been bitten by one as a child, but he does have a point: Wagnerian opera as �twenty minutes of good tunes and three days of gods shouting at one another�, for example. The ludicrous conventions of opera are thoroughly lampooned: the idea that a woman could maker herself unrecognisable by wearing a tiny mask; death scenes that take an hour and several arias to complete ("Isn�t she dead yet?"). When Agnes/Perdita finally does get to sing at the end, Granny Weatherwax declares the opera finally over, which isn�t going to be hard for the reader to complete. More oblique is that when Granny and Nanny Ogg arrive in Ankh-Morpork they alight from the stagecoach in Sator Square: complete the word square if you will (the fourth word is �Opera�). Then there�s the references to �the Phantom� and to Andrew Lloyd Webber�s composition methods. It doesn�t even matter that it�s a borrowed story; this is, after all, operatic territory.
The ending is, as it were, satisfactory. The Witches sequence of Discworld novels do seem to need proper endings; it is part of the role of the witches to see that the demands of story are adhered to, while the City Guards or Wizards novels don�t seem to need so much tenacity to the demands of closure. It might not seem to be the most desirable conclusion, but it has the sense of being right. �There was just enough rebellion left in Agnes to put a sarcastic edge on her voice. "Oh? Are you offering to teach me something?" "Teach? No," said Granny. "Ain�t got the patience for teaching. But I might let you learn."�
With his finely-tuned sense of the preposterous it must have been inevitable that one fine day Terry Pratchett would turn his attention to that most preposterous and cod-mediaeval of artforms (apart from Fantasy itself) that is opera. Ankh-Morpork, which has often had something of turn-of-the-century Vienna about it, charm and corruption mingled uneasily, now has itself an Opera House, run by a man who used to be a cheese magnate, and where strange things are starting to happen backstage, and a mysterious masked figure is spotted high in the roof. He even sends manic laughter in finely-written notes to the manager. To this strange place comes one Agnes Nitt, a big girl with a huge voice: the kind of range that would have made Callas hide in a corner. Agnes is into wearing pale makeup and black lace gloves, being mysterious and interesting and calling herself Perdita X Dream, where the X stands for �someone with a really cool middle initial�. Unfortunately it doesn�t quite work, and she has to stand backstage while the pretty but bag-of-rocks dim Christine actually goes on stage and mimes to Agnes�s singing. Meanwhile Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are in town because Nanny wants paying her royalties for her bestselling �The Joye of Snacks�; and also arriving by the same coach is one Henry Slugg, who has spent years building up a career as tenor Enrico Basilica, having to eat spaghetti while yearning for meat pies and dumplings.
There are plenty of jokes, thankfully. Opera is described in a way that makes me think Terry must have been bitten by one as a child, but he does have a point: Wagnerian opera as �twenty minutes of good tunes and three days of gods shouting at one another�, for example. The ludicrous conventions of opera are thoroughly lampooned: the idea that a woman could maker herself unrecognisable by wearing a tiny mask; death scenes that take an hour and several arias to complete ("Isn�t she dead yet?"). When Agnes/Perdita finally does get to sing at the end, Granny Weatherwax declares the opera finally over, which isn�t going to be hard for the reader to complete. More oblique is that when Granny and Nanny Ogg arrive in Ankh-Morpork they alight from the stagecoach in Sator Square: complete the word square if you will (the fourth word is �Opera�). Then there�s the references to �the Phantom� and to Andrew Lloyd Webber�s composition methods. It doesn�t even matter that it�s a borrowed story; this is, after all, operatic territory.
The ending is, as it were, satisfactory. The Witches sequence of Discworld novels do seem to need proper endings; it is part of the role of the witches to see that the demands of story are adhered to, while the City Guards or Wizards novels don�t seem to need so much tenacity to the demands of closure. It might not seem to be the most desirable conclusion, but it has the sense of being right. �There was just enough rebellion left in Agnes to put a sarcastic edge on her voice. "Oh? Are you offering to teach me something?" "Teach? No," said Granny. "Ain�t got the patience for teaching. But I might let you learn."�
