"Thief of Time" by Terry Pratchett

Plot summary: A mysterious lady enlists an overwhelmingly sane clockmaker to create a perfectly accurate clock. Somehow, doing this will completely stop time for everything without the power to time travel. Two of the History Monks (whose job it is to make sure time in the Discworld keeps going) get involved in this, as does Death's granddaughter Susan (despite her best efforts). Also, the whole clock thing is |another Auditor of Reality plot|.

This is the one where we finally get an explanation for why continuity in the Discworld has always been rather squiggly: |someone previously built a perfectly accurate clock that later broke, and the History Monks did the best they could at patching up history with the materials they had|. So you get the Battle of Koom Valley copypasted into different eras five or six times over, and long blank stretches of history where nothing much happened because their contents were shifted into other places. It's not a terribly in-depth explanation, but at least it is one. 

(Note: I'm not completely certain, but I'm pretty sure that just "Discworld" is the name of the series, and "the Discworld" is the name of the setting.)

 

One of the History Monks the book focuses on, Lu-Tze, is a follower of the Way of Mrs. Cosmopolite. I suspect that if I hadn't read Witches Abroad before this, that wouldn't have been nearly as funny.

As it turns out, Auditors of Reality (yeah this is their fault) |can incarnate as humans. This does, however, cause them to develop human senses (such as "pain" and "taste") and emotions It also makes them rather unstable|.

There are actually five |Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Discworld: Death, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Ronnie. Actually Ronnie is Chaos, but he quit being a Horseman of the Apocalypse to go be a milkman in Ankh-Morpork instead.|

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

 

4 stars, on the high end. This is one of my more favorite books in the series right now.

Favorite lines:

    Some signs are made to |confuse the Auditors of Reality to death|. I have reproduced them here.

    KEEP LEFT [the sign is an arrow pointing right]

 

    DO NOT FEED THE ELEPHANT.

 

    IGNORE THIS SIGN.

                          By order 

 

    DUCK

 

    Pages 316, 317, 317, and 318, respectively.

Appearances of Death count: 9.

(Endnote: Apparently Discworld yetis have discovered how to |respawn|.)