Discworld book eleven is also the second book in the Death arc. What happens when Death is fired by the auditors of reality? This book answers that question, while being funny and thought provoking about such things as Sir Terry always is.
Death is surprisingly eager to spend his time now that he has an hourglass like the mortals he ushers onwards. He chooses to use this time living a surprisingly pastoral life, meets Miss (Renata) Flitworth whom he ends up working for on her farm, and even gets a normal name, Bill Door, also known as Good 'ol Bill to the locals.
Meanwhile, Windle Poons, the oldest wizard on the Disc, who had a fun secondary role in the prior book Moving Pictures, knows he's about to die. Being a wizard, Death should come to see to him personally, but he never shows up. This causes him to become undead, and specifically a zombie. His fellow wizards at UU try to help him stop being undead but have no luck. He's not the only undead around either. He joins the Fresh Start Club, which is run by the activist zombie, Reg Shoe. Reg's agenda is for dead rights, "Undead yes! Unperson no!" and meets several others with similar predicaments.
Deep in the Shades, where our friend C.M.O.T. Dibbler has a warehouse of stuff he's always trying to sell, he discovers that he's the proud owner of a plethora of snow globes, which were previously unknown on the Disc. Soon they are all over Ankh-Morpork, and people forget about them after admiring the little snowfall on various landmarks of the city. As things progress, those globes are found broken open and strange, but useful wire trollies are seen all over the place in the twin cities, and they are the harbingers of something sinister.
Then we have Mrs. Evadne Cake and her partial werewolf daughter Ludmila. Mrs. Cake is a medium (bordering on small), who quickly discovers that the spirit world is overcrowded. One-Man-Bucket, her preferred guide in the spirit world, is having to flex his spiritual might against the newcomers. One-Man-Bucket's full name is actually One-Man-Pouring-A-Bucket-Of-Water-Over-Two-Dogs. His tribe names their newborns after the first thing their mother sees after stepping out of her tepee. He got off a bit better than his slightly older twin brother in the name department.
Add to all that, strange things are happening all over the place: screws unscrewing, clothing running away, carpets flying around, and all kinds of other bizarre activity occur in ever increasing amounts. Activity that annoys the Patrician so much that he calls all the guilds, the wizards, and the priests, to tell him what exactly is going on, but none of them can answer. The Librarian also gets involved. He was dealing with his distaste for the undead when his books were threatened. One does not threaten any books lightly, but it's an especially bad choice when the Librarian is an orangutan.
All of the previous happenings are of course directly related to Death's retirement and current absence from the Disc. A marvelous book that ties those interlinked events to a satisfying and humorous conclusion, it also takes a profound look at life, death, and the foibles of capitalism. Death reflects on what it means to be mortal as someone who never was before. Windle learns that he was missing so many things when he was alive that becoming a zombie has opened his eyes and mind to a startling degree. Miss Flitworth grows as a person when she hires Death/Bill Door, and she opens up to other people more thanks to their relationship. She had closed herself off a lot after losing her fiancé many years ago, and having Bill around broke down her walls a bit. Some of the other characters don't grow that much, the UU faculty amongst that number, but not every character needs to have an epiphany.
The new characters are such a joy to read about. I love the Fresh Start Club with Reg's enthusiasm and the others' mostly good-natured tolerance of his goals of ending vitalism (in this instance, vitalism is prejudice against the undead), Ixolite the banshee that is too self-conscious to wail and instead leaves people notes about their impending doom, Schleppel the shy bogeyman who has to carry his own door to hide behind, Lupine who instead of being a werewolf is a wereman and is a normal wolf most of the time, Sister Drull the ghoul who is terrible at making food, and Arthur and Doreen Winkings aka Count and Countess Notfaroutoe, who were a regular couple until Arthur inherited the Notfaroutoe castle and title, and he was bitten by the lawyer that presented the will, making him a vampire and her pretending she's one as she wants to support her husband.
Other fun new characters include the previously mentioned Mrs. Cake who would fit in well with the Lancre Witches and is a force to be reckoned with in her own right. Her daughter Ludmila is a fun werewolf too, being quite well-behaved, even if she can't handle the fine China or knitting needles well when transformed. She gets along quite well with Lupine once they meet. Modo, the dwarf gardener of UU, is part of the fun as well. He's mostly a straight dwarf (as opposed to a straight man) to the shenanigans around him, although he has a run in with an ambulatory compost pile as part of all the strange phenomena we encounter. This is also where we get to see the Death of rats for the first time, along with the even smaller Death of fleas.
As things come to a close, the new Death that forms is so very different from our beloved reaper that it reminded me of our discussion about Death in Honest Fangirl's Final Destination review discussion. I've used part of this quote there as well, but this is so profound and moving that it needs a special mention here again:
"ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOMEDAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS.
Death took a step backwards.
It was impossible to read expression in Azrael's features.
Death glanced sideways at the servants.
LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?"
Statements like that, combined with some of the funniest things I've ever read, are why Sir Terry is my favorite author and Discworld my favorite book series. This is also my favorite book to this point, just like when I first read it so many years ago. It has an almost perfect combination of humor, pathos, and holding up a satirical mirror to real life. It can be sad at times, but it never stays that way for long. It's prime Pratchett, and it doesn't get better than that.
4 extremely sharp scythes out of 4.
Some fun quotes:
"Yeah, it's always the same," said Reg Shoe bitterly. "Once you're dead, people just don't want to know, right? They act as if you've got some horrible disease. Dying can happen to anyone, right?"
"It can't be intelligent, can it?" said the Bursar.
"All it's doing is moving around slowly and eating things," said the Dean.
"Put a pointy hat on it and it'd be a faculty member," said the Archchancellor.
"Why does everyone run toward a blood-curdling scream?" mumbled the Senior Wrangler. "It's contrary to all sense."
Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.
Half of this book should be my favourite discworld novel, and the other half is merely very good. Unfortunately, I find the weird mishmash in tone makes the book as a whole less than the sum of it's parts. The complete disconnect between the two halves doesn't help either. It still sits in my top 5, and will always have a place in my heart simply due to the fact that I used the "Noone is finally dead..." quote as the starting point of my Mum's eulogy.
ReplyDeleteI've seen comments about that before, how the Death arc and the snow globe/egg/etc. arc don't mesh well, but I've always loved this book partially from how its almost frantic in its pacing at times, and I love the chaos.
DeleteA fitting eulogy as well. This book is sillier than many of his books that touch upon situations from our own lives, but it's also very deep at times, and that's why it was my lead in quote.