Death (with a capital D, or even all small-caps if you’re a particularly cheeky typographer) is the only character to appear in just about every one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. And better yet, he occasionally gets to star in one, like Reaper Man. The gist is that Death seems to be developing a bit of a personality and compassion for the souls he collects once their lifetimers have counted down, and that’s a big no-no according to certain guardians of the Right Proper Order of Things. So Death gets fired and sent off to live as a mortal until he dies.
Crazy, right? Well, par for the course on the Discworld. The problem for the rest of the Disk’s humans is that their Death isn’t replaced in a timely fashion, so the souls of the newly departed either just sort of hang around or decide to stick to familiar ground and pop back in to their bodies. So you’ve got a plague of thoroughly confused and moderately annoyed zombies roaming around the place. Only they’re not the “Blearg, brains!” kind, but rather the “Hey, what did you guys do with all my stuff?” kind. There’s also some fairly incomprehensible stuff about killer shopping carts, snow globe eggs, and runaway shopping malls.
As a book, Reaper Man is two thirds good. I loved the parts with Death learning about life by living as a farmer named “Bill Door” and facing down death –irony! existentialism! Plus there was this great running gag with a dyslexic rooster who crowed things like “Dock-a-loodle-fod!” all the time. And the parts with the late Unseen University faculty member Windle Poons coming back as a zombie and taking up arms in the equal rights for the undead crusade was a great bit of social commentary. The only part I didn’t like (or even really comprehend) was the tie-in part where the wizards and undead team up to fight shopping carts and city destroying things posing as …shopping malls? I dunno. That was kind of weird.
On balance a great Discworld book, though. I love seeing Death fleshed out (so to speak) as a character, and he’s got some really nice moments here with some other characters.
Published by