Reaper Man

Reaper Man is the story of what happens to Discworld (and to Death himself) when Death is "fired" for developing a sense of self. In Ankh-Morpork, the life forces of everything that should have naturally transitioned start backing up and some souls that should have passed are stuck. Oh, and Death heads to a farm in the country to put his stellar scything skills to use.

This is a book that I liked the first time I read it but didn't love. I thought the two plot lines weren't equally compelling. That definitely changed this time through. I loved Windle Poons, the zombie wizard, and his motley band of undead compatriots. I also loved the transformation of Death into Bill Door. The moment when he told Miss Flitworth that he was afraid to die show more was heartbreaking. There were so many funny and bittersweet moments in this story that I was a bit disappointed when everything resolved. Even the strange snow globe/trolley/mall plot was amusing.

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I have mentioned my ambivalent feelings regarding Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series before, and that I still enjoy them, if not quite as enthusiastically as most. Reaper Man, the eleventh volume, is the book in the series I have enjoyed the most so far. I suspect that this is due to two reasons… well, one reason I suspect, with the other I am quite certain.

The first one is that Reaper Man does not have any clear satiric aim – I know that Pratchett is often praised precisely for this satirical impetus and that many consider this to be what raises his novel above the common crowd, but for my part, I am suspecting that he is at his best when he writes just for the fun of it. Sure, there are some (okay, quite a few) satirical asides show more in this novel, but the satire is just a side effect and not the prime mover and in consequence does no subjugate the plot but lets it run its merry and often quite bizarre course. And for this reader at least the resulting novel is considerably more fun than one that makes heavy-handed attempts at being relevant and often only ends up flogging a dead horse in the process. You could, if you really wanted, pobably read some kind of parable into this, but thankfully you don’t have to, and the novel reads significantly better without it.

The second reason why I liked this best among the Discworld books so far is of course because its protagonist is everyone’s favourite character, namely Death, who is arguably Pratchett’s greatest creation. He is pensioned off his job here, becomes mortal in consequence, and decides to spend his remainin time to explore what exactly that means, whereupon a lot of hilarity ensues, some very bizarrre situations evolve and even a few truly touching moments happen. show less

Reaper Man is an excellent novel about mortality and the value of life. While it is the eleventh Discworld novel, it can be read independently of the others and is a fairly good book to start the series with.

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away…”

Reaper Man, in short, is a book where Death gets fired. Not death, the end of living, but Death, the grim reaper who who carries away the souls.

From this initial beginning the book splits into two plot lines. The majority of the page time is spent on Windle Poons, a 130 year old wizard who dies but doesn’t end. Instead, Windle becomes one of the undead. Together with his fellow undead and the staff of the Unseen University, Windle must deal with an show more overabundance of life force and a new threat to the city. The other plot line deals with Death himself. When he’s fired he’s given time before an eventual death of his own. He gets a job on a small farm and begins to live among humans.

Death’s a wonderful character, and his journey through Reaper Man is beautiful. He’s eager to understand humans and human experiences, but everything is new and almost out of his grasp. He starts to feel time encroaching when he wants nothing more than to go on living.

“Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward?
How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair. Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs of darkness. How could they stand to be alive?”

While I’m not as interested in Windle’s character, it’s interesting how his path is almost the opposite of Death’s in that he suddenly has more time, not less. But both Death and Windle learn to find value in the time they have.

Like with the best Discworld books, Reaper Man makes you both laugh and think, moving from hysterically funny one moment to thought provoking the next, sometimes managing to be both at the same time. It’s a book I’ve loved for a long time and have been able to share with friends and with my dad. It’s a book that I would recommend to everyone. After all, we are all human and will have to meet Death someday.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page. show less

This is one of my favorites. It has so many delightful characters: Death of course, and Miss Flitworth, and Reg Shoe, and the working-class vampire couple, and Mrs. Cake.... Windle Poons' post-death journey of self-discovery, and the fact that the characters all succeed by being kind to each other and bonding over their differences, are so heartwarming a way that is very typical of Pratchett. On top of that, the fact that Pratchett manages to work in a critique of the inhumanity of modern corporate culture through the intrusion of a modern mall into a fantasy world is just brilliant.

Reread July 2024: I can't believe the only time I have read this was back in 2011. It was like reading the book for the first time as I remembered so little. This seems to have worked out as I enjoyed it more star-wise on this read through than last time.

While technically this is the second in the Death sub-series of Discworld, the story is two main plots. In the first Death is basically fired from his job for having developed a personality and is given a short time remaining for his existence. This triggers the second plot thread with the repercussions of all the build up of life now that Death isn't there to help souls transition. I found Death's story line to be introspective and provide some profound thoughts about human nature and show more life. This is balanced by the other story line with Windle Poons and the hilarity of the UU staff trying to figure out what's going and kind of sort of getting there. The Dean sure had a lot of fun anyway! It made for a highly entertaining and touching read.

I'm glad to be rereading my way through the Discworld. Pratchett was such a genius. show less

A hilarious look at what happens when Death decides to take some time off from his job: literally all hell breaks loose. This could only be told this hysterical by Terry Pratchett, one of the all-time masters of satire. Parts of this book had me rolling, but I have to say the last 1/4 of the book got a bit muddled, but it was still a very enjoyable book. The scene of Death being asked if he had any experience with a scythe before he goes out to reap corn on a lady's farm is just a freaking riot.

My partial re-read of Pratchett's Discworld series continues with the second book in the sub-series focusing on Death. In his previous novel, Death tried to retire from his job for a while, which didn't go all that well. In this one, he's not given a choice, but is instead forcibly ousted from his post and reduced to mere mortality.

There's actually two main storylines here. One features a group of wizards (including one who is currently undead, since Death wasn't around to collect him on schedule) dealing with some of the weird side effects of a world that, for the moment, lacks a life removal service. That's good, silly, fun, with a wonderfully bizarre climax, but, I confess, it's not the part of the story that stuck in my head from my show more years-ago first encounter with this book, and there were moments when I found myself just an eensy bit impatient to get back to the Death bits.

Those bits feature Death getting a job as a farm hand (well, he is very good with a scythe), trying to fit in among humans, and discovering for the first time what it's really, truly like to know you are finite. And that part of the story is just beautiful. Funny and sweet and terribly poignant, with the sense of some very profound human truths lurking under the light fantasy exterior. Admittedly, I might be a little biased, because I have immense fondness for Pratchett's Death as a character. But the ending has made me feel, well, just a little bit like a pile of emotional mush. And, yes, that is a good thing. show less