Discworld's twenty-third book sees us back at Lancre. This means we get to see the witches, the newly expanded royal family, the dwarf lover Casnunda, albeit only briefly, and the locals we know and love from prior novels, such as Shawn Ogg, Jason Ogg, and Hodgesargh.
But things aren't exactly rosy in the tiny kingdom, otherwise, we'd not have a very interesting book. A family of vampires from Uberwald have taken an interest in Lancre, and for nefarious purposes. King Verence made the mistake of inviting them to join the celebration of the first royal child, and they don't want to leave. They also lack many of the traditional vampire weaknesses, and their ability to affect minds is stronger than typical vampires as well.
Agnes is the third witch now, and when we get her, we also get Perdita, since they inhabit the same brain and body. Her situation helps her deal with the vampires, since her mind isn't as simple to manipulate as most other people's are. She shares this trait with the Quite Reverend Mightily-Praiseworthy-Are-Ye-Who-Exalteth-Om Oats, luckily shorted to Reverend Oats or Mightily Oats most of the time, as he has two minds about everything, and they rarely agree.
As one can imply from his name, Oats worships Om and was called in to the ceremony when the regular priest fell off his donkey. Since this all takes place after Small Gods, Brutha's reforms have changed a lot of things about the Omnian faith, but they are in a period of having so many schisms that even its priests can't keep track of what current doctrine is. He does mess up the naming of Magrat and Verence's daughter, though. Magrat was so named because her mother couldn't spell Margaret, so to make sure her daughter isn't cursed with the same issue, she wrote down her name for the priest, but she added the phrase 'note spelling' to the name card, so Oats literally pronounced her as 'Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling,' and since that was the official ritual, that's her name. Poor Magrat just can't catch a break!
These vampires, or vampyres as they like to be known as now, are of a group that are overcoming their traditional weaknesses. The Count has taught his wife and two children how to overcome garlic, crossing running water, holy water, religious symbols, and even the sun to a degree. What makes this all better is that Sir Terry plays fun with classic horror beyond just those weaknesses, some of which always felt like it would make vampires kind of pathetic; he even has an angry mob show up at one point and the count cheers them for the torches and pitchforks, but poo-poos the scythes.
As a classic horror lover, I found large portions of this book to be hilarious as he often is but amplified by these tropes. They even have an Igor that tries to make the place more traditional, despite the current count's wishes to modernize things. He tries to replace the more modern lanterns with candles and torches, whips spiders to get them to make more webs, and even sprays dust all over at one point. Add in his strange accent combined with a lisp, and he's difficult to read at times, but also quite amusing. Reading up on things a bit, Sir Terry based the count on Christopher Lee's Dracula, so the tie-in to classic horror is very strong throughout the entire book.
We also meet the Mac Feegles, which are little pixies with a thick Scottish accent and quite belligerent. We've met them in earlier books as well, but they feature more here, even helping save the king, largely thanks to Nanny Ogg, although they also use him in an unusual and amusing way as well. They will play a much larger role in future books, once we meet a certain young witch named Tiffany.
The four vampyres are a strange mix, with the daughter Lacrimosa being the most monstrous of them all, despite her also being whiny about things. Vlad, the son, is charming in his own way, especially where Agnes/Perdita is concerned, but still dangerous and a bit too smug. The countess is mostly motherly to her children and supportive of her husband, so she doesn't stand out as much since she lacks the more extreme traits of the others. The count is genuinely scary in a sophisticated way. He's most often so calm, cool, and collected, even while committing inherently evil acts, which makes him all the more terrifying for that very gentility. They are actually a powerful challenge for our beloved witches, with even Nanny Ogg partially succumbing to their nefarious aura that makes most people like subservient drones. Granny finds herself facing her greatest challenge to date here, one where the outcome isn't assured, and that adds a lot of tension to the proceedings and makes it a smashing read.
This book is great fun, and it hits especially well for me with my love of classic horror, and how Sir Terry is obviously a fan while also making fun of it. That combination of the wondrous witches and classic horror make this one a true joy to read, so it well deserves top marks.
4 classic horror tropes out of 4.
Some fun quotes:
"Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants. The chips on some shoulders had been passed down for generations. Some had antique value. A bloody good grudge, Lancre reckoned, was like a fine old wine. You looked after it carefully and left it to your children."
"The people of Lancre wouldn't dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They'd done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they'd also found that it didn't do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he'd be certain to want something different and so they'd have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practise the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them."
"Granny Weatherwax had a primal snore. It had never been tamed. No one had ever had to sleep next to it, to curb its wilder excesses by means of a kick, a prod in the small of the back or a pillow used as a bludgeon. It had had years in a lonely bedroom to perfect the knark, the graaah and the gnoc, gnoc, gnoc unimpeded by the nudges, jabs and occasional attempts at murder that usually moderate the snore impulse over time."
Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.
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