Reaper Man

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.

The Auditors have a new concern - Death has become too human. His developing personality has disqualified him from the job and now, for the first time ever, Death himself has a lifetimer. With his new-found time running out, Death decides to make a life for himself on a farm, utilizing the only marketable skill he has - reaping.

But with a new Death in town, the recently deceased are noticing a disruption in service. Some are coming back as zombies and ghosts, but the majority of spirits are just stacking up and the surplus of life energies is having a strange effect on Ankh Morpork. It's up to the wizards of UU to sort things out.

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 lesser Discworld novel with the standard Pratchett nuts and bolts: whimsy, puns and clever ideas, sometimes let down by busy prosing and a kitchen-sink strategy to content. The Death plotline is pretty damn good, even bittersweet at times, with Death being removed from his job as reaper of souls and taking his horse Binky to go live on a farm with the elderly dear Miss Flitworth. The secondary plotline, with Windle Poons, is, in contrast, quite poor. It seems to have little relevance to the main plotline and, standing alone, fails to hold interest (something about shopping malls?). The Poons plotline is quite hard to follow, whereas the Death plotline could easily be made into a good movie, Discworld or no. Death is a character you show more can always rely on. show less

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

So in this one Death (or Bill Door, whichever you like), has been given the sack and turns to reaping corn (you must admit, he’s a lot of experience with a scythe) for an old woman while he waits for the new death. The way he reaps the corn one strand at a time had, to me, a reverential sort of feeling to it.
Now Death has got to be my favourite character. I think it’s the way he tries to understand our world and will, on occasion, get the wrong end of the stick. His time in the village is very much like this. Especially when it comes to the little girl there that can see exactly what he is.
But it doesn’t just focus on Death and the pastoral life. No, no. With no Death aren’t dying ... that is to say, they are, but not in the show more typical sense. At least, not for humans. And there’s the chaos with stuff that wasn’t/hasn’t been alive moving about.
On top of this, there are the mysterious trolleys. Lots of them. They were quite amusing actually. They’re like the seagulls in Finding Nemo. You could imagine the seagulls saying “Mine” all the time and you could, without much trouble, imagine trolleys wheeling themselves to some out-of-the-way place.
The ending ... I kind of already knew the ending. At least the outcome for Death. What happened to the trolleys and the wizards was a whole different story.
In short: I loved this. show less

So this was a fun book. The only reason why I gave it 4 stars is honestly the Death stuff was my favorite part of the book and the other plot point with Windle though at times interesting, didn't have me laughing and or almost near tears while reading. Apparently though me not loving the wizards is a "Discworld" reader thing so that's good to know from others. I could have read about Death and Miss Flitworth all day honestly. What a lovely friendship.

"Reaper Man" follows Discworld when Death itself realizes he is about to run out of time. Due to Death waiting for a New Death to come about, death has no meaning right now, which leaves a wizard named Windle Poons who has recently died to awaken back to life and find out what it all show more means.

Reading about Death who ends up realizing he's about to die (yes really) and his adventures as he goes off to become Bill Door was great. I just loved it. When we get to "see" Death dream for the first time. And I cracked up at his back and forths with Miss Flitworth.

As I said earlier, we also get another plot point about a wizard, Windle Poons who is 130 and is waiting for Death himself to come and take him away. When Windle dies and then "wakes back up" we get to follow him as the other wizards don't quite know what to do with the undead wizard.

The writing was clever and the dialogue at times had me laughing. And how Pratchett wrote about Azrael had me really interested and makes me want to read the rest of these books. I tried and started Color of Magic so many times and I did finally finish it, but I didn't really get a burning need to read anymore stories set in this world. Now I do.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2021, "Deadlands" square. show less