Carpe Jugulum

Witches and vampires in one book!  How could I not love this?

My most recent trip to Terry Pratchett's Discworld was via Carpe Jugulum.  In this book, the king and queen of Lancre have just given birth to their first daughter.  Being the forward-looking monarch he is, King Verence decides to invite the rulers of all the neighboring kingdoms, including the vampires next door, to the naming ceremony.  But these aren't your old, dusty vampires; they're modern vampyres.

I thought of Andrew every single time I read that word.

Once the vampyres have received their invitation to the princess's naming ceremony, they're free to enter the kingdom of Lancre.  They intend to take over the kingdom and use its inhabitants as an all-you-can-eat buffet.  It's up to the witches to stop them and save the day.

There's also an Christian Omnian priest along for the ride.  He's an interesting character in that he's constantly questioning himself and his religion.  It makes for some great commentary on the fragmentation of the Christian church into various sects who can't ever seem to agree with each other.  There's also some good stuff about how far you can trust any book, be it holy or otherwise, and a wonderful discussion about the nature of sin.

Carpe Jugulum also introduces the Wee Free Men, who I've been eagerly awaiting for several books now.  I didn't think they showed up at all until the Tiffany Aching series started, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover them on the very first page.  The Wee Free Men are essentially miniature Scotsmen.  Having never seen Braveheart (I'm a failure, I know), I can only assume that this is what they are based on.  They are six inches tall, blue (due to extensive tattooing), constantly drunk, always looking for a fight, fond of stealing cattle, and incapable of agreeing on a battle cry.  The favorite appears to be "Nac Mac Feegle", but honestly that might just be one very vocal individual.

I'm a huge fan of vampires, which is probably the main reason I enjoyed this particular book so much.  It manages to bring up every single myth about vampires I've ever heard of, and even comments on the fact that no two cultures agree on all the details.  One fights them off with garlic while another uses lemon.  They can't cross running water or survive direct sunlight.  They can read and control minds and turn into mist.  The modern vampyres in Carpe Jugulum have managed to suppress all their weaknesses while maintaining their powers, which make them especially formidable.

This book also has two of my favorite old ladies in fiction: Granny (Esme) Weatherwax and Nanny (Gytha) Ogg.  Granny is the classic crone, hard and abrasive, but always able to make the decisions that no one else wants to think about.  Nanny is as motherly as it's possible to be, with 15 children and uncountable grandchildren.  She's able to create a mob using only members of her own family.  Meanwhile Agnes fills in the position of maiden in their coven.  She's just as interesting, though somewhat less sure of herself than the other two.  This is probably due to the fact that Perdita (the thin girl trapped inside overweight Agnes) is constantly nagging her.

This is definitely one of my favorite novels in the Discworld series.  Of course that's mostly because it stars my second favorite group of characters (after Death) and deals with a topic I'm very interested in and know a lot about (vampire mythology).  The great thing about Discworld is that there's something for everyone

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