Maskerade — Discworld #18 / Witches

A coven short of a witch

The witches of Lancre are down to two. With Magrat Garlick gone off to marry the king and become queen, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg find themselves a member short — and a coven of two, Granny knows, is no coven at all; it is just two witches in a room slowly deciding to dislike each other. They need a third, and the obvious candidate is Agnes Nitt, a young woman from the mountains with a glorious natural voice, an enormous talent for witchcraft she keeps trying to ignore, and an unhappy habit of being described as having “a wonderful personality and good hair.” Agnes, however, has run away to Ankh-Morpork to become an opera singer.

So Granny and Nanny pursue her to the big city, ostensibly to retrieve their wayward recruit and incidentally to collect Nanny’s royalties — she has, it turns out, written a scandalous cookbook that is selling like nothing else. Maskerade, the eighteenth Discworld novel and the fifth featuring the witches, is Terry Pratchett’s opera book, and at its centre is a gleeful, knowing parody of The Phantom of the Opera and the gloriously ridiculous conventions of grand opera itself.

The Ghost in the Opera House

The Ankh-Morpork Opera House is haunted. A masked figure in evening dress prowls the catwalks, leaves notes signed with kisses, occupies a private box that must always be kept empty, and has an unfortunate tendency to be present whenever someone is found strangled. The management would rather not investigate too closely — the show, after all, must go on — and the chaos of egos, divas, terrified chorus girls, and incomprehensible plots provides perfect cover for murder.

Agnes, hired for her extraordinary voice but pushed to the back of the chorus because she does not look the part, becomes the secret powerhouse behind a beautiful, talentless prima donna — singing the high notes from the wings while the pretty one mimes. It is a sharp joke and a sharp wound: Pratchett’s real target is the lie that the world tells people like Agnes, that talent and competence are somehow consolation prizes for those denied beauty, and that the spotlight is reserved for the decorative. Agnes’s growing rage at being the invisible engine of someone else’s glory gives the comedy a genuine edge.

Granny and Nanny on the case

With Magrat absent, the book becomes a two-hander, and the pairing of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg as amateur detectives is a delight. Granny treats the entire baffling world of opera with withering, headology-powered contempt, seeing straight through every illusion the theatre depends on. Nanny, by contrast, throws herself into city life with cheerful gusto, charming everyone, drinking everyone under the table, and gathering gossip that turns out to be more useful than any clue. Their double act carries the novel, and Granny in particular is on magnificent form, manipulating events with the serene confidence of a woman who has already worked out the ending.

The murder mystery itself is fairly slight — the culprit’s identity will not stun seasoned readers — but the plot is really a frame for the satire. Pratchett clearly adores opera’s beautiful absurdity even as he skewers it: the impossible plots, the dying that takes twenty minutes of singing, the superstitions, the tyrannical economics of the show. The affection and the mockery are inseparable, which is the Pratchett way.

Where it sits in Discworld

Maskerade is the fifth Witches novel, after Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, and Lords and Ladies. It works best read after Wyrd Sisters and Witches Abroad, where the coven dynamic and Granny’s character are established, and it directly addresses the gap left by Magrat’s departure into queenship. Crucially, it introduces Agnes Nitt — also known by her thin, glamorous inner voice, Perdita — who becomes the third witch going forward and returns in Carpe Jugulum. Newcomers can follow Maskerade alone, but the recruitment plot means much more if you know the coven it is reshaping.

Within the series it is upper-mid-tier: not as thematically deep as Witches Abroad, but consistently funny, with a real point underneath the laughs.

The craft and the heart

The heart of Maskerade is Agnes, one of Pratchett’s most sympathetic creations. Her struggle — to be seen for what she can do rather than dismissed for how she looks, and to decide whether to accept the witch’s path she has been resisting — is treated with real tenderness amid the farce. Pratchett understood the particular cruelty of being underestimated, and he gives Agnes both dignity and a sly, watchful wit.

There is also a nice thread of social satire running underneath the greasepaint. The Opera House is a machine for manufacturing illusion, and Pratchett uses it to poke at how institutions reward the appearance of excellence over the substance, how money and superstition keep a creaking enterprise lurching forward, and how the people doing the actual work are so often kept out of sight. Nanny Ogg’s scandalous cookbook subplot — a runaway bestseller built on cheerful innuendo — slyly mirrors the main theme: it is the unglamorous, underestimated woman who turns out to hold the real power.

Wrapped around her is a fast, funny, warm-hearted comedy about masks, performance, and the difference between the show people put on and the truth underneath. For opera lovers and Phantom fans it is an extra treat; for everyone else it is simply prime mid-period Discworld.

Our rating: 4.1/5 — A witty, affectionate send-up of grand opera and The Phantom of the Opera, carried by the Granny–Nanny double act and the warm, sharp introduction of Agnes Nitt.