"Reaper Man" by Terry Pratchett

Plot summary: Death decides that life sounds fun and quits his job as Grim Reaper to be alive instead, going incognito as "Bill Door" and getting a job on a farm. Unfortunately, that means everything that dies gets stuck between life and the afterlife, and none of it is happy about this. Also, somehow, this results in a predatory eldritch being taking root in Ankh-Morpork by spamming novelty snowglobes everywhere that hatch into animate shopping carts, then luring everyone into a semi-organic shopping mall so it can eat them or something. And Death's absence ends up creating a bunch of sub-Deaths (such as the Death of Trees), of which the Death of Rats is the only one to survive the book.

Actually, the Death of Fleas also survives the book, but he doesn't count because he's tiny and basically comes bundled with the Death of Rats.

As I mentioned previously, Dick Simnel's dad shows up in this. He doesn't have much of a role; Bill Door just hires him to |destroy the absurdly sharp scythe he made|. Apparently Death likes making inordinately sharp things.

The Auditors of Reality do play into this one; I first encountered them in Hogfather, where they hired Teatime to kill Discworld Santa because they don't like him, but I didn't mention them because they weren't really important in that. They're the things that keep the laws of physics working and all the planets/stars/what-have-you moving in their neat little circles. Also they're sentient, but if they develop a sense of self they instantly cease to exist. This is apparently because a sense of self means you're alive, and you can only be alive for a finite time before you die, and compared to the infinity of not having a sense of self any finite lifetime is practically instantaneous, and therefore their time of self-awareness (and thus life) is instantaneous, so they stop existing as soon as they develop a sense of self. Make sense to you? No? Me neither. It's more holes than logic. And yet, it still works on them.

 

Something named Azrael also shows up in this one, and he doesn't have a huge role either, but I'm talking about him here because seriously, what is going on with him? He's called the Death of Universes, is apparently in charge of both Death and the Auditors of Reality, appears to be imprisoned somehow, is unfathomably massive (like probably bigger than galaxies), and... maybe is the same thing as the Great Attractor? I don't even know. What I do know is that I now have a trump card in "can you beat this character with another character" things as long as said first character isn't omnipotent.

 

This appears to be the first mention of the Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents; I know it was written before that book was because the Death of Rats shows up in Amazing Maurice.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for crude humor and swearing.

 

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    [the Farmer's Almanac and Seed Catalogue] took a certain grisly relish in recounting the various mass murders, vicious robberies and natural disasters that befell mankind, on the lines of "June 15, Year of the Impromptu Stoat: On this Day 150 yrs. since, a Man killed by Freak shower of Goulash in Quirm" or "14 die at hands of Chume, the Notorious Herring Thrower."

    Page 105.

    "That man is a skelington"

    Page 109. This from a little girl who is the only person to actually recognize that Bill Door is actually Death the seven-foot skeleton.

    Sergeant Colon did know the meaning of the word "irony." He thought it meant "sort of like iron."

    Page 337.

    NO, YOU CAN'T RIDE A CAT. WHO EVER HEARD OF THE DEATH OF RATS RIDING A CAT? THE DEATH OF RATS WOULD RIDE SOME KIND OF DOG.

    ...

    DON'T ASK ME. I DON'T KNOW. SOME KIND OF TERRIER, MAYBE.

    Page 343.

Appearances of Death count: 6.

(Endnote: Bill Door is finally persuaded to |go back to being Death| because |he gets offended because the new Death| is too melodramatic.)