Carpe Jugulum" by Terry Pratchett

A family of modern vampires arrive to take over Lancre. The witches try fighting back.

A cast of wonderful characters includes Agnes who is always in two minds one of which is called Perdita, a handsome young vampire called Vlad, Nanny Ogg, the sluttiest slattern that every was a real witch, and the wonderful Igor, the vampires' coachman, who is a self-made man in that he has sewn himself together from bit of old family members because there's no point wasting good organs.

But there are so many fantastic jokes that it is almost impossible not to miss some. When a frontal attack on the castle fails they try a backal attack and then a sidle attack. This is another brilliant novel from the discworld stable.

Too many brilliant moments to record all of them but here are some of my favourites:
"Those who are inclined to casual cruelty say that inside a fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate. Agnes's thin girl was Perdita." (p 18)
"Witches always lived on the edges of things. She felt the tingle in her hands. It was not just from the frosty air. There was an edge somewhere." (p 35)
"Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time." (p 42)
"She did feel ... unusual, ill-tempered and snappish, as if she'd put on a vest that was too tight." (p 63)
"We'll all be murdered in one another's beds." (p 83)
"There was some sort of chemistry here, although it was the sort that results in the entire building being evacuated." (p 110)
"I didn't know buoys had glass balls." (p 120)
"What a waste of skin." (p 145)
"It was as if, just because they'd got the label which said 'mother', everyone else got a part of the label that said 'child'..." (p 177)
"knowing when to say nothing ... left a hole in the conversation that the other person felt obliged to fill." (p 202)
"He'd found knowledge and knowledge hadn't helped." (p 232)
"the seeker after truth had found truths instead." (p 232)
"Sin ... is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is." (p 314)
"There was a moment of discontinuity, a feeling of sliced time." (p 399)

April 2017, 425 pages