Terry Pratchett's Discworld - Reaper Man

Apologies for this feature going quiet. In retrospect I think a book about mortality may have been the stumbling block over lock-down but I did agree about doing them in sequence… Ah well lets go onward and upwards!

One of the biggest debates on Discworld is a great starting place. Reaper Man holds a special place in my heart as that is where I did start my Discworld journey way back in 1991. I was in an airport saw the Josh Kirby cover below and I NEEDED this book – I didn’t read it on the busy holiday but the next day with jetlag I picked it up and a few hours later finished. After that I wanted the rest. If you want to know which book first pulled me into what fantasy can do – it is this book not the one with hobbits.

My copy is dated 1991 and at the time of purchase I’d be on the verge of turning 15. Not a bad time I was making friends in school many of which I would still be talking to today and I was starting that weird process of actually for the first time being a bit more comfortable in my own skin at school. 1991 was the year of the first Iraq war and it was strange seeing a war as a TV news event, the UK was in recession that was scaring by dad with interest rates and it was hard to escape the Bryan Adams song Everything I Do I Do It For You – but on the bright side the world got Alan Rickman’s Sherriff of Nottingham.

My Very Battered Copy

Price - £3.99!

Publisher - Corgi

Death is Missing – Presumed…er…gone

Which leads to the kind of chaos you always get when an important public service is withdrawn. Meanwhile, on a little farm far, far away, a tall dark stranger is turning out to be really good with a scythe. There’s a harvest to be gathered in…

Returning to that theme of beginnings then I am going to suggest that Reaper Man starts the second phase of the Discworld. All the major series have been created at this point – Witches, Watch, Death and Ankh-Morpork plus Pratchett over the previous books has found the voice and approach that works – plus discovered plotting. Re-reading Reaper Man I think we enter a new phase where Pratchett starts to explore what else can be done with Discworld. It takes some ideas we have seen before, but it’s got a slightly more interesting approach to experimentation I probably wouldn’t have expected after Moving Pictures.

The plot is quite simple Discworld’s Death is sacked by the Auditors of reality for being too human. He is given a lifetime to do what he will so a better i.e. more inhuman Death can take his place. The impact of this is life forces swirl around allowing the ancient wizard Windle Poons to be undead he meets a new underground group of various undead fighting for their rights and Ankh-Morpork gets invaded by something that eventually resembles a shopping centre with a deadly army of shopping carts. While that is going on Death takes the name Bill Door and works for a landowner Miss Flitworth. But Death’s successor expects to meet him soon…

On the one hand this is quite a strange book. We have two main plots – and interestingly my copy I realised had different typeface for them – the Poons plot is really the B plot caused by what happens to Death. I’ll go with the Poons storyline first and back when I was 14 this was the coolest bit of the story – a fantasy world invaded by predatory shopping carts? Wizards acting stupid and firing fireballs? Monsters that are actually all friends? I can see what at the time was not Middle Earth blew my mind and I think seeing the references to horror and action films all clicked. This was my first experience of a book parodying other media. Reading it nearly thirty years later (crimes) and this plot line feels flatter. In terms of Discworld yet another invasion from a external force outside reality trying to destroy Ankh-Morpork by book TEN is getting repetitive and perhaps that’s why this is the B plot. It’s not that interesting when we have seen it before. The theme of out of town shopping centres destroying towns in 2020 seems quaint.

What I do like is Windle Poon’s character – previously a buffoonish wizard with a loose grip on reality in this story Pratchett makes him a man who realises he has wasted his life. Pratchett makes him someone with privilege (a powerful wizard) who in death now knows there is more to the world than he ever noticed. An older man becoming aware of the wider world and trying to help it is quite a refreshing lead character. I also liked that this books mixes in the Morporkian cast – wizards, Guards and adds n the undead. Here Reg Shoes the earnest Undead union official is played for laughs as are his efforts for equality but very soon its notable that Pratchett returns to that theme in many books in this next phase of stories.

These days the highlight for me is Death’s storyline. From almost a villain in the early stories here he is very much a hero. Death’s storyline is less him getting to experience a human life as in Mort but suddenly understanding the nature of mortality for those he is responsible for. Pratchett cleverly takes cornfields and scythes and battles Bill with a combine harvester. Death isn’t wholesale destruction taking pleasure in it (as his crowned successor admits) but takes each person’s life as precious and one little girl’s life eventually becomes worth fighting for just on principle. I’d argue that in Reaper Man Death becomes someone who isn’t just someone by then fascinated with humanity but also someone now happy to protect his flock from outside interference as we saw in the later Hogfather. This section of the book feels more confident and reflective – Pratchett isn’t just doing plot now but taking on a more wider theme just as the meaning of life and that definitely feels a new element to the books that came before which perhaps now the world and main characters are cemented means he can use the cast to push ideas we haven’t seen before.

And of course, reading this book in 2020 I cannot help but be tinged by sadness that Pratchett is no longer here. That however is counteracted as in Reaper Man there is a lot of reflection on how life happens to all of us from mayflies to ancient trees and we all have to use out time well. Knowing what is to come in Discworld is exciting and a reminder that someone is not truly dead until their actions and words no longer impact the world in which case I think Reaper Man is a great example of #GNUTerryPratchett

Next up – the Witches go on holiday in Witches Abroad!