Steven Harper Piziks

CARPE JUGULUM DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Themes: light vs. darkness; vampires vs. witches; two minds or single-minded?; faith vs. practicality; old ways vs. new ways; "in the blood"

PART 1 (pp. 1-65)

1.         What bird do the vampyres try to kill at the beginning of the book, and how does it fit one of the themes?

2.         What is special about Agnes, and how does it fit one of the themes?

3.         What happened to the highwayman and who does he hold a conversation with afterward?

4.         How is Mightily Oats, the preacher, similar to Agnes?

5.         What decision (judgment) must Granny make with Mrs. Ivy and why does she make the choice she does?

6.         What are the invitations for, and how are they especially important to the vampyres and to Granny?

7.         How is Nanny changing, personality-wise?

8.         What does Oats declare the baby princess’s name to be, and why does this happen?

9.         What is Agnes’s attitude toward Vlad, and what is his attitude toward her?

10.       What is Igor’s attitude toward the new vampyres?

11.       Why does Nanny dislike Oats so much?

12.       What odd object does Hodgesaargh find, and where did it come from?

13.       How do Nanny and Agnes try to find the vampyres and what do they find out as a result?

14.       What is Hodgesaargh looking for in the forest and how does he try to find it?

PART 2 (pp. 66-117)

1.         When Agnes and Nanny arrive at Granny’s cottage, what is striking about the objects Granny has left out and what do they all mean?

2.         Agnes accidentally makes a bawdy reference to buoys. How does Nanny Ogg respond to it, and why does this worry Agnes?

3.         Why do people generally call on Nanny for the births and Granny for the deaths?

4.         What are the young vampires doing these days with their names, and why are they doing it?

5.         What is the vampire family’s attitude toward Igor, and why do they think this way?

6.         Oats is encountering a problem when he tries to preach in Lancre. What is it?

7.         Oats says there can only be one phoenix. Hodgeasaargh privately disagrees. Why? And how does this fit one of our themes?

8.         According to Oats and Nanny, what do you always have to do to kill a vampire, and why is this funny?

9.         How do Agnes and Oats sneak into the castle, and why are they able to get away with it?

10.       How does Agnes persuade Magrat to leave the castle?

11.       When Magrat takes charge of the situation and gives orders, Agnes realizes what is happening to her (Magrat)?

12.       Where does Nanny think Granny has put her mind, and why?

13.       What’s the problem the witches have with crossing the bridge in the gnarly ground, and why is Agnes/Perdita able to solve it? (Side note: Terry Pratchett was a big fan of Lara Croft.)

14.       What strange object does Granny keep in a bottle, and how does it fit our themes?

15.       Why does Agnes think Nanny is wrong about where Granny put herself?

16.       What does “from can to can’t” mean, and how does it fit our themes?

PART 3 (pp. 118-163)

1.         What is Nanny’s suggestion for how Agnes could stop Vlad, and what is Agnes’s reaction to the idea?

2.         What are the pictsies like and why are they in Lancre?

3.         How do the pictsies steal cattle and how does Nanny prove to Agnes and Magrat that the pictsies are dangerous?

4.         What does Igor keep doing in the castle that annoys the vampires, and how does this fit one of the themes?

5.         Vlad says his great-uncle lived in Don’tgonearthecastle Castle. What is the joke here?

6.         How is Oats of two minds about his faith? (Look at p. 132-133.)

7.         According to the Count, why does Oats have no power over the vampyres?

8.         What happens when Granny challenges the Count? What does this say about the Count’s power?

9.         What is the reason Nanny and Magrat abandon Agnes in the castle, and what is her attitude toward this?

10.       What do the vampyres do to Granny?

11.       What happens to King Verence in this section?

12.       What happens when Nanny and Magrat meet Igor, and what is Igor’s reaction to Nanny?

13.       How does Granny stop herself from changing into a vampire and what does the process do to her?

14.       Who does Agnes wind up with at the end of this section?

PART 4 (164-201)

1.         Magrat and Nanny have Igor take them into Uberwald. What event from the beginning of the novel does this parallel and how does it fit one of our themes?

2.         When Agnes refuses Vlad's offer to become a vampire, she says, "I won't know good from evil." (p. 166)  What is Vlad's response to that, and how does it fit a theme?

3.         What do the pictsies and the Kelda do for Verence, and how does it fit a theme? Also, what do the pictsies want in return for this favor?

4.         What is Granny's attitude toward faith and gods, and how does it contrast with Oats's view?

5.         How do we see the theme light vs. darkness in the attitude of the other birds toward the phoenix?

6.         Oats gets a mule for Granny to ride, and she says, "Neither one thing nor t'other, eh?" What does she mean by that? (You may need to look up mules.) Also, what biblical reference is Pratchett making?

7.         What is the only way Granny accepts Oats's help and why does it work?

8.         Multiple times, the text points out that Granny and Agnes would both make "a good vampire." What's the pun here?

9.         Describe the arguments Granny and Oats have about the nature of faith.

10.       How does Oats try to save Granny's life when she collapses, and how does he actually do it? How does this fit a theme?

11.       How does Magrat shock Nanny (it's about Igor), and how does it fit a theme?

12.       What was the old Count (the old Master) like, and why does Igor admire him?

13.       How does Granny's attitude toward Oats change at the end of this section?

PART 5 (pp. 202-end)

1.         What arrangement does the Count have with the town of Escrow and how does this year's visit end?

2.         Oats says, "And [Om] said that we should take light into dark places." How does this fit a theme? What is the light and the dark place Oats (symbolically) is talking about?

3.         What kind of prophet does Granny say she would make?

4.         Before Agnes wakes up on page 215, she has an internal moment reminiscent of Granny. What does this foreshadow (since you've finished the book)?

5.         Where does Agnes wake up, and what has happened to her?

6.         What happens when Verence returns to the castle?

7.         According to Agnes and Granny in this section, what is the definition of evil or sin?

8.         The Magpyres argue quite a lot among themselves in this section. Also, on page 219, the Count asks for tea. What is this similar to, and what does this foreshadow?

9.         Nanny, Magrat, and Igor use the old methods of fighting vampires--and they win. What does this say about old ways vs. new ways? 

10.       Why doesn't the phoenix's fire burn Granny and Oats, and what does this say about both of them?

11.       What is making Agnes act more assertively on pages 229 and 230?

12.       How does Magrat defeat the Countess and how is this symbolic? (Think chess.)

13.       So how did Granny defeat the vampires after all, and how does it fit multiple themes?

14.       What attitude do the villagers have toward the old Count?

15.       Describe Oats's moment of triumph.

16.       What is Granny's sentence for the young Count, and what theme does it fit?

17.       In the end, what way is proved better: the old or the new? What examples do we see of this?

In 1997, I learned that my favorite author Octavia E. Butler was teaching at the Clarion workshop in Lansing, Michigan, only half an hour's drive from my house. I reached out to her and arranged an interview for Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine. It was one of the highlights of my career--I got to spend an hour talking to the best SF writer in the world and got paid for it! I was shocked and deeply saddened when I learned she'd passed away from a stroke in 2006, and I shouted with joy when I learned Amazon Prime had greenlighted a series based on her Patternmaster novels.

IRON AXE is now available in German translation!  WELTENSPALTER ("world splitter") is now available at Amazon.de and in bookstores everywhere. 

I've been paging through the book. A few observations:

1. They translated Trollboy's name to Trolljunge! Cool! When David Eddings sold THE BELGARIAD to a German publisher, the translator kept all the names in English, including the characters Silk and Velvet, instead of translating them into Seide and Samt, and it came across as silly in the German. This translator is way better!

2. Although I loosely used Danish and German culture as the basis for the land of Balsia, I wasn't thinking when I created the death god Vik, whose name in the book is also used as a swear word. Looking at the name surrounded by German words has made me realize that a German reader would naturally pronounce that name "fick," which is the German word for "fuck." Oops! Or . . . did I do that on purpose? Yeah! That's it!