Maskerade (by Terry Pratchett)

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I’m re-reading - gradually - through Terry Pratchett’s lengthy ‘Discworld’ series, and reached the eighteenth novel, ‘Maskerade’. I recalled quite enjoying this one when I read it before; the last time was in 2006. Despite it being over fourteen years ago, I even remembered some of the story. However that’s probably because it’s loosely based on the classic ‘Phantom of the Opera’.

The unfortunately named Agnes Nitt is really the star of this book, in a low-key kind of way. Agnes comes from Lancre, and is cursed - in her mind - with a nice personality. She has an incredible voice, and she’s also extremely overweight. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg think she should be the third witch in the area, now that Magrat is working as Queen, but Agnes wants to see the world.

Agnes - who has changed her name to Perdita - ends up at the opera, where her voice is soon discovered. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have the looks for opera. She befriends the naive and rather fluffy Christine, who has the looks but not the voice. She also becomes friendly with the hapless, uncoordinated Walter Plinge, who does all the odd jobs around the opera.

The opera is reputed to have a masked ghost, who always uses Box Eight. To date it’s been a mostly benign presence, engendering a little frisson of fear and nervousness, but no real problems. However, the opera has been taken over by a wealthy cheesemonger, and he has quickly found that it’s not just a question of selling seats and raking in money. The accounts are in a terrible mess, there’s no money at all in the kitty, things keep getting broken… and, even worse, two people are killed, and notes are left, apparently by the ghost.

This isn’t the only story, of course - in typical Pratchett style there are other subplots, although the opera ones are the main ones. Granny and Nanny travel to Ankh Morpork to see what Agnes is doing… but their official reason is to see the publishers of Nanny’s cookbook, something which is full of suggestive recipes and which has apparently taken the world by storm. Granny realises that Nanny should have received a large amount of royalties, and is determined that she will get it...

The writing is good, the plotting cleverly done, the author laying a few clues about the identity of the ghost which I followed alone, half remembering but not certain until towards the end. And yet... somehow I didn't find it gripping. Sometimes when I start a book, I can barely put it down. With this one, I had no real compulsion to keep reading, and it's taken me a week to complete it.

There’s plenty of humour in the interaction between the two old friends, and their travels. Their characters are quite well developed by this novel and they both feel quite three-dimensional. Of course there’s also classic Pratchett humour in his references, most of them quite obvious, to other operas and also to the classic ‘Phantom’ story.

I’ve always liked the ‘witches’ books in the Discworld series, and ‘Maskerade’ is no exception.  It stands alone, as do most of the novels in the series, but it’s all the more enjoyable if read after the earlier Witches books - namely ‘Wyrd Sisters’, ‘Witches Abroad’, and ‘Lords and Ladies’.

Recommended to anyone who likes Pratchett’s quirky kind of humour.

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