Twas the night before Hogswatch

It’s the night before Hogswatch and the Hogfather is missing. Without him delivering presents the little children will lose their belief and without it the sun will not come up. This calls for the intervention of one man – Death (well… one anthropomorphic personification anyway) – to masquerade as the Hogfather and help restore faith that the light will return.

Yes, it’s a Discworld novel, buried midway through the series and featuring everybody’s favourite Grim Reaper. We’re also reunited with his grand-daughter Susan (currently acting as a governess and desperately trying not to turn into Mary Poppins), and the old enemy the Auditors (who still think humanity is messy and the world would be neater if everything just stopped existing).

The basic story is a delightfully dark Christmas tale about the manipulation of belief featuring an insane assassin who has planned how to kill every fairytale and god. Here, Death has to step in and pretend to be the Santa Claus equivalent in order to ensure that life goes on. He is, of course, hilariously bad at being jolly but very good at righteous anger (there’s a pointed jab at Andersen’s Little Match Girl – Death isn’t going to let a child die to make a moral point).

Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is a work of genius and it still upsets me that we lost him to Alzheimer’s when there was still so much potential in there. It’s an unusual book series in that I wouldn’t recommend people start with the first book (The Colour of Magic) as that doesn’t possess the character of later books, instead start with something like Equal Rites or Mort and you’ll see the world emerge more fully formed. I started with Equal Rites when I was young (my late father handed it to me in a library and told me he thought I’d like it, he was right). This belongs to the “Death” series and can be read as a standalone though you will understand Susan better if you’ve read Soul Music at least.

For me, the characters of Death and Sir Samuel Vimes (commander of the Watch), feel most like Pratchett himself – passionate and angry at an uncaring world. Terry Pratchett’s books are funny – often laugh out loud hilarious – but the humour becomes more cutting and honest as he evolved as a writer and person. There is darkness in the wit that holds a mirror up to humanity and makes you think about more serious topics (race, religion, gender, fear of “the different”). This is actually almost a lighter book and does make a perfect read for the Christmas period.

Basically, if you haven’t read Discworld you should give the series a go. There’s a good chance that one sub-series will appeal too you. And if you’ve already read Discworld you know you can pick it up and re-read as often as you like – it’ll still live up to it!