Reaper Man By Terry Prachett - Review In the Dark

over 1 year ago (Edited)

Hey Hivers & Bookworms,

I have been reading quite a bit this year, a long-lost hobby that I picked up quite aggressively again. I've also been meaning to mix up my blog a bit, need just posting about gaming and fitness for the longest time, so thought I would mix it up. Inspired by a few reviews I read on @steevc's blog, I thought I'd give my first book review a go... Here goes it.

A Closer Look At Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Original Cover by terryprachett.com

The 11th book in Terry's Discworld series is filled with fantasy and humour and downright weirdness in true Pratchett style.

This is not a tale about love, loss or regret. But a story about all these things, essentially about learning to be human. Terry takes on a wacky and wonderful journey through the eyes of the Two main characters, Death ( as in the grim reaper), a Window Poons, the oldest Wizard in Ank Morpok, who is basically waiting to die.

Death has been around since the beginning of time, a supernatural being whose main purpose is to help souls move on to the afterlife. But the powers that be think Death is taking too much interest in humans and developing emotions. So they fire him and give him human qualities. He now has time in his existence, and time is running out. So he heads out to the real world to live amongst the humans. Still a bag of bones wrapped up in a robe; he heads to the Ramtops, the countryside of the Discworld. Humans don't seem to notice his odd appearance coz their tiny brains can't process things out of the ordinary. Death takes on the human alias Bill Door (just like our @bil.prag ), shacks up with an old spinster and becomes a farmer.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Discworld is going mental because people are supposed to die, but they are not. So they just keep on keeping on and become zombies and so on. Windle Poons is expected to die as all Wizards know when it's their time to go. After 130 years his ready to go, deaf as a doornail and as frail as you would expect someone to be if they survived so long. But to everyone's surprise, his clock just keeps ticking. The rest of the Wizards obviously try their best to get him to the other side, but nothing seems to work. It doesn't take Poons long to figure out his body is working way better as a zombie than as a live human. He can recall everything he ever read or experienced and is basically this vast being of knowledge and wisdom. He goes off on the adventure of a lifetime, trying to end the chaos on the disk.

I won't give away the whole story as it's a great read, and we watch windle and death experience life on the other side; Death as a human and Windle as a bit of a supernatural being. They all find their place in the world. Windle learns how it is to be different and faces some prejudice because his dead. We also see the view of how people tend to treat old people, even when they have quite a bit to offer. Meanwhile, Death is living his best life, being seen as just another human.

All is well till shit hits the fan and our two heroes have to roll up their sleeves and stop the disc from going to blazers.

All in all an excellent read; I gobbled it up in a few days. Thought-provoking and funny in a world that fuels your imagination.

Rating: 5/5⏳⏳⏳⏳

What did you think?

I hope you enjoyed the read. And I'm keen to hear your thoughts on the book. Even better, if you've read it before, tell me how much you loved it!

Much love from Sunny Cape Town,
@Mimismartypants

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42 comments

@steevc 79

over 1 year ago

It is a while since I read this book, but I think I need to read the whole series again some time. My better half re-reads them a lot. Death features a lot in the books and is a great character. When I saw this post I thought of @bil.prag as he told me a while ago that his user name was influenced by this book. I got to meet him at Hivefest.

Nice review. I hope to see more from you.

!PIZZA

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