★★★★☆ Hanging out with Death

Reaper Man

Terry Pratchett

Death (the character, not the phenomenon) is the only real hero of Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Unlike every other Discworld character (with Granny Weatherwax and Lord Vetinari as sporadic but unreliable exceptions) Death is relentlessly competent and by his lights ethical. He's also a kind of cool guy to hang out with. Already he has developed a personality. Although Reaper Man is only the second book in the Death subseries, we readers have seen quite a lot of him. In a series in which violence plays as important a role as Discworld, and in which in addition there is a specific character who shows up every time someone dies, you can safely bet that Death is going to have at least a cameo in each Discworld novel.

Not everyone loves Death. There is a body of people -- well, not people, best just call them entities -- called the Auditors of Reality who take it on themselves to make sure the universe runs as it should. In their view Death should be an impersonal force, so it is doubleplusungood that he's been developing a personality. They fire him. This has two kinds of consequences.

First, since Death is no longer doing Death-things, he has time on his hands. Literally -- there is now one of those little life-timers for the person previously known as Death, which Death picks up and takes with him to the Discworld. He takes a name and a job as a farmhand. Lacking experience in being a living person, Death often gets it wrong, which is amusing.

Second, because the Auditors didn't really plan this out the way they should have, they don't have anyone ready to replace him. Thus there is one of those "brief interruptions of service" one hears so much about. Turns out that when death goes on the blink a lot of confusing and probably also bad consequences eventuate. We see most of this from the vantage of Ankh-Morpork and the wizards of Unseen University.

Reaper Man is fun and contributes to the development of Death as a character. Pratchett also appears to be aiming for some philosophical depth in Reaper Man -- I found this aspect of the novel unconvincing. As always, YMMV.

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