Carpe Jugulum (Discworld, #23; Witches, #6)

by Terry Pratchett

and she’d seen the shadow of Death come for him, and then behind Death came the smaller, brighter figures,

New bit of worldbuilding I've never picked up on before or something else?

“I mean Magrat’s got a daughter! She’s a mother!” said Nanny. “Well, yes! That’s how it works! So?” They were shouting at one another, and they both realized it at the same time.

Yay! Pratchett is playing with the Witches as classic triple goddess "mother-maiden-crone" imagery. And my little Classicist heart grew three sizes that day...

“There you go again, my dear. There is no room for ‘but’ in our vocabulary. Verence was right, oddly enough. There’s a new world coming, and there won’t be any room in it for those ghastly little gnomes or witches or centaurs and especially not for the firebirds! Away with them! Let us progress! They are unfitted for survival!”

Countess Magpyr: class warfare, eugenics, racial egocentrism; seems like a Lady Macbeth figure while the Count seems comparatively more benign and more focused on overcoming vampiric hereditary drawbacks

Granny shook herself. “Anyway, if there’s a problem, well, you’ve got your three witches. It doesn’t say anywhere that one of them ought,” she nodded at Agnes, “to be Granny Weatherwax. You sort it out. I’ve been witching in these parts for altogether too long and it’s time to . . . move on . . . do something else . . .”

Is this meta-commentary of Pratchett being ready to conclude the Witches series?

“Or maybe you could just sort of . . . make him change his ways a bit,” Nanny went on. “It’s amazing what a wife can do if she knows her own mind, or minds in your case, o’course. Take King Verence the First, for one. He used to toss all his meat bones over his shoulder until he was married and the Queen made him leave them on the side of the plate. I’d only bin married to the first Mr. Ogg for a month before he was getting out of the bath if he needed to pee. You can refine a husband. Maybe you could point him in the direction of blutwurst and black puddings and underdone steak.” “You really

Maybe not Nanny Ogg’s best advice.