Maskerade by Terry Pratchett, opera, witches, and Discworld at full volume

Review

Coming straight after Interesting Times, Maskerade feels like one of those lovely reminders that Discworld could change costume completely and still sound unmistakably like Pratchett. This time he turns his eye to opera, backstage politics, inflated egos, and the sort of murder mystery where the corpses arrive with perfect comic timing.

Having read the whole main Witches run around this point, I think Maskerade holds up very well as a late-stage Witches novel, even if it is not quite the absolute peak of the sequence. It does not have the folkloric bite of Witches Abroad or the raw menace of Lords and Ladies, but it knows exactly what sort of story it wants to be, and it commits to the bit with enormous confidence.

The obvious comparison is The Phantom of the Opera, but Pratchett never settles for a simple parody. The Opera House in Ankh-Morpork is gloriously overcomplicated, full of vanity, superstition, and institutional chaos, which makes it a perfect Discworld setting. He gets a lot of mileage out of the absurd logic of opera itself, where everyone behaves as though ludicrous emotion is the most natural thing in the world, and where a masked killer somehow feels less disruptive than bad management.

Agnes Nitt is a big reason the book works as well as it does. She is one of Pratchett’s sharper character creations, funny, awkward, intelligent, and permanently at odds with the shape the world wants her to fit into. The material around voice, appearance, and performance gives the novel more to chew on than just jokes about fat ladies and crashing chandeliers. Underneath the comedy there is a barbed little story about who gets seen, who gets heard, and who gets credit.

Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are also in splendid form. By this point Pratchett knows he does not need to overplay them. Granny can dominate a scene with a look or a line, while Nanny continues to weaponise cheerfulness, gossip, and shamelessness better than almost anyone in fantasy. Their presence keeps the book firmly anchored in the Witches strand, even while Agnes quietly threatens to steal it from underneath them.

If I have a reservation, it is that Maskerade sometimes feels slightly more amused by its setting than transformed by it. The jokes land, the atmosphere is strong, and the mystery is fun, but it does not quite deliver the emotional or thematic kick of the very best Discworld books. I enjoyed it a lot, I admired it throughout, but I did not love it in the same way I loved Wyrd Sisters, Mort, Guards! Guards! or Small Gods.

That still leaves it as a very good Discworld novel, which is a high bar. If you like Pratchett when he is in full satirical performance mode, and if the idea of witches stomping through a comic murder mystery in an opera house sounds appealing, Maskerade is easy to recommend. It is witty, theatrical, slightly vicious in the right places, and packed with the kind of throwaway lines Pratchett made look effortless.

Rating: 4/5

The Audible UK edition is narrated by Indira Varma, with Peter Serafinowicz and Bill Nighy, and runs to 10 hours and 5 minutes.