Maskerade (Discworld #18; Witches #5)

Format: Audio (Audible)
Read: November 2025

I was not as engaged with the story in this one as I was with previous Witches books. I already don’t remember that much about it, and I finished it about a week ago.

Each Witches book has focused on a different aspect of storytelling – particularly those with witches and/or magic – and parodying the tropes. This one takes on Opera, which I am not familiar with aside from having seen The Phantom of the Opera when I was either 11 or 13 years old on a school London theatre trip when I was definitely too young to appreciate or understand what was going on. In fact, Maskerade uses the plot of Phantom (including a character called Christine), and I did recognise it, but beyond that, any Opera references that might have been present flew past me.

Another barrier to my enjoyment of this one was that Magrat is not in this book! It is understandable; she is now Queen of Lancre, but I love her, and I missed her dynamic with Granny. Nanny knows that they need a third for their coven, someone to provide a focus for Granny’s energies, and her sight is set on recruiting Agnes Nitt (aka Perdita X Dream, one of the teen witches from Lords and Ladies). Agnes however, has gone off to Ankh-Morpork in search of a singing career, and the older ladies follow her there after reading some ominous tea leaves.

I did not find Agnes an engaging character. I would say she is much more of a “wet hen” than I ever found Magrat to be. She is extremely passive and contributes very little to the overall plot. To compensate for weakness and low self-esteem, she slowly develops Perdita as a second personality through the book, but that never really went anywhere, and I just found it quite annoying.

Another huge mark against Agnes as an enjoyable character is the way Pratchett describes her. She is extremely overweight, and she never appears on the page without a description reminding us of how fat she is. These descriptions are meant to be funny in a self-depricating way because it’s her own point of view (I think), but in 2025, fat jokes are extremely dated (this was published in 1995) and come across as grotesque. There are just far too many of them; there is absolutely no need to be told Agnes is fat every time we spend time with her.

On the positives, this is a great novel for Nanny Ogg! She really shone in this one. I loved her handling of Granny, the fact that she’s written a best-selling sex book (sorry, recipe book) and that she really gets to put her charisma and people skills to use. Granny was actually in a bit more of a back seat here, though obviously, she does save the day as she always does.

There were some great scenes with Granny getting a makeover so she could pretend to be a fancy, wealthy Opera patron! I also loved seeing Greebo in his man form again, and I love the growl voice Indira Varma does for him.

One more to go in the series, from the description, I think Magrat is back in the story, so I’m looking forward to that!