"Thud!" by Terry Pratchett

Plot summary: The dwarves and the trolls are at each other's throats again. Meanwhile, someone stole a giant painting, someone kills a dwarf, there's an ancient spooky being trying to possess Commander Vimes, and there's drama in the Watch because Vetinari made them hire a vampire and she doesn't get along with Captain Angua.

The ancient spooky being is named the Summoning Dark, which is one of the more epic names of anything in the Discworld.

Apparently the dwarves sometimes find ancient artifacts when they're mining, including voice-recording cubes and strange rectangles that revolve once every six point nine seconds. Continuously. Regardless of how much stuff is attached to them. The rectangle things aren't even a plot point like at all, but they're my favorite thing in the entire book.

The title refers to a fictional chess-like game about dwarves versus trolls. There actually are rulesets available on the internet for the more-serious-than-me Discworld fan.

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

3 stars.

Favorite lines:

    "And, incidentally, tomato ketchup is not a vegetable," Sybil added.

    Page 170.

    *Empirical Crescent was just off Park Lane, in what was generally a high-rent district. The rents would have been higher still were it not for the continued existence of Empirical Crescent itself, which, despite the best efforts of the Ankh-Morpork Historical Preservation Society, had still not been pulled down.

    This was because it had been built by Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, better known to history as Bloody Stupid Johnson, a man who combined in one frail body such enthusiasm, self-delusion and creative lack of talent that he was, in many respects, one of the great heroes of architecture. Only Bloody Stupid Johnson could have invented the thirteen-inch foot and a triangle with three right angles in it. Only Bloody Stupid Johnson could have twisted common matter through dimensions it was not supposed to go. And only Bloody Stupid Johnson could have done all this by accident.

    His highly original multidimensional approach to geometry was responsible for Empirical Crescent. On the outside it was a normal terraced crescent of the period, built of honey-colored stone with the occasional pillar or cherub nailed on. Inside, the front door of No. 1 opened into the back bedroom of No. 15, the ground floor front window of No. 3 showed the view appropriate to the second floor of No. 9, and smoke from the dining-room fireplace of No. 2 came out of the chimney of No. 19.

    Pages 193-194.

    YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR-VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON'T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK.

    Page 381.

Appearances of Death count: 26.

(Endnote: Did you know that Death's speech is an absolute pain to format?)