Carpe Jugulum

One of my favorites of the Discworld Witches subseries. In no small part because it revolves around Anges, my favorite young witch and introduces my two favorite races, the Nac MacFeegles and Igors. Great story with fun humor. Pratchett loves taking on these pop culture phenomenons, and this was published during the run of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. I love it when Discworld puts their characters up against classic horror monsters, phantom of the opera, vampires, werewolves and so on.

Among the themes of the book, this one is directly stated: Evil begins when you treat people as things. This has an anti-corporate message, as in corporations using the masses to drain their money, for cheap labor, etc. Other themes are the idea of being reborn (the phoenix, Granny Weatherwax returning, the life cycle of the vampire, the notion of what faith is (all conversations with Granny and Oats) and duality or contradiction of mind (Agnes vs. Perdita and Oats knowledge of what he's supposed to believe in vs. what he actually thinks).

Though Granny remains the problem solver, the story is observed through the younger characters, Agnes and Mightily Oats. Granny Weatherwax spends some time dealing with fears of being obsolete, with there technically being four witches in Lancre these days.

Carpe Jugulum's biggest conflict comes out in favor of a traditional approach, which is unusual for the series that generally favors not sticking to tradition. For instance, main villain County Magpyr took a “modern” approach of contracting with his victims, making them into docile farm animals instead of the traditional monstrous approach of hiding in the shadows and coming to his victims at night. Verence's attempts to be a “modern” king and improve the kingdom were largely ignored by the Lancrastrians, who take what they see as a sensible approach at all times.

Perhaps even Pratchett was not immune to being in a contradictory state of mind.

It's a real pleasure to read and reread this series and get more from it each time.

This is not a review. It's a complaint that I'm inflicting on GR because everyone I know either doesn't read or loves Discworld. Every time this book seemed like it was getting better, something new made me “ugh”. I already knew I didn't like Terry Pratchett because it has that specific humour that I can't quite describe other than “British Cringe”. Banjo-Kazooie is the same way, and another well-beloved property that I can't stand. Anyway I read this because I found it in my house so thought I may as well. Here are a list of my grievances in no particular order.
-The phonetically written accents. There is a character with a lisp, whose dialogue often has to be read more than once to figure out what the hell it says. Awful. Writing like this is fine, but you have to make it legible! Much worse is the pixies, who speak in what I can only assume is Scots. Very early on I just started skipping their dialogue altogether, because it wasn't worth the brain power to figure it out. Later on one specific pixie has much easier to read dialogue, which means the author knew how awful it was and toned it down for this character that actually says important things. maybe it's supposed to be a joke that you can't understand it? But it's just very annoying.
-The main character is fat. To start with this seems part of her general low self-esteem, so fair enough. But in earlier chapters it's mentioned what feels like every other page. Often there are “fat jokes”, except... they aren't even jokes. She's a blob. She's think black shouldn't be worn by the circumferencially-challenged (which doesn't even make sense as black is universally acknowledged as the best colour to wear). Real genius stuff. Then there's a scene where she hides inside a coffin, and I was expecting her to have difficulty fitting, because she is fat. Nope. The one time her size could be in any way relevant it wasn't mentioned. Truly incredible.
-Characters that turn up never to be seen again. The pixies looked like they were going to be this. They are the first character you meet, and don't reappear again until halfway through the book, when they do very little. 2/3 through they reappear and actually do something. Why introduce them so early? There is a highwayman introduced in a way that seems like he might become a main character, but he witnesses the vampires kill someone and then is never seen again. I was expecting him to reappear for a while before realising he never would. Why give him a name and backstory when he only exists for 2 pages? We also get the POV of the guy who gets killed for one very short and pointless scene. It's not to introduce Death, because another scene does this much better. It's just there because the author never throws away an idea. This also explains the many pointless footnotes. You don't have to put every idle musing in your book.
-Probably more but I've exhausted myself complaining. I will just end this abruptly right here.