"Reaper Man" by Terry Pratchett

A Discworld novel. Other reviewed in this blog include

• Carpe Jugulum in which Lancre is invaded by a family of vampires
• Going Postal in which Moist has to reform the postal service for Lord V.

But there are lots of others and all those I have read have been great.

In this DEATH, wj=ho always speaks in CAPITAL LETTERS, is retired. This causes an unfortunate disruption to normal services. In other words, Ankh Morpork is in chaos.

Pratchett maintains his usual blend of twisted metaphysical insight with jokes ranging from wonderful to brilliant:

• "seconds, endlessly turning the maybe into the was."(p 8)
• "there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone." (p 11)
• "gently slicing thin rashers of interval from the bacon of eternity." (p 15)
• "It's the difference between morning dew on a cobweb and actually being a fly." (p 33)
• "If you could do a sort of relief map of sinfulness, wickedness and all-round immorality, rather like those representations of the gravitational field around a Black Hole, then even in Ankh-Morpork the Shades would be represented by a shaft." (p 47)
• "Mrs Evadne Cake was a medium, verging on small." (p 73)
• "Doing it without the right paraphernalia is like taking all your clothes off to have a bath." (p 101)
• A funeral is "a reverential form of garbage disposal". (p 122)
• "that long nasal whine which meant that folk song was about to be perpetrated." (p 168)
• "JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS A METAPHOR DOESN'T MEAN IT CAN'T BE REAL." (p 194)
• "Cities - big sedentary creatures growing from one spot and hardly moving at all for thousands of years. They breed by sending out people to colonise new land." (p 202)

But this is just a taste of the brilliance. He can by funny and wise, and funny and touching at the same time. Wonderful. August 2017; 285 pages

Carpe Jugulum" by Terry Pratchett

A family of modern vampires arrive to take over Lancre. The witches try fighting back.

A cast of wonderful characters includes Agnes who is always in two minds one of which is called Perdita, a handsome young vampire called Vlad, Nanny Ogg, the sluttiest slattern that every was a real witch, and the wonderful Igor, the vampires' coachman, who is a self-made man in that he has sewn himself together from bit of old family members because there's no point wasting good organs.

But there are so many fantastic jokes that it is almost impossible not to miss some. When a frontal attack on the castle fails they try a backal attack and then a sidle attack. This is another brilliant novel from the discworld stable.

Too many brilliant moments to record all of them but here are some of my favourites:
"Those who are inclined to casual cruelty say that inside a fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate. Agnes's thin girl was Perdita." (p 18)
"Witches always lived on the edges of things. She felt the tingle in her hands. It was not just from the frosty air. There was an edge somewhere." (p 35)
"Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time." (p 42)
"She did feel ... unusual, ill-tempered and snappish, as if she'd put on a vest that was too tight." (p 63)
"We'll all be murdered in one another's beds." (p 83)
"There was some sort of chemistry here, although it was the sort that results in the entire building being evacuated." (p 110)
"I didn't know buoys had glass balls." (p 120)
"What a waste of skin." (p 145)
"It was as if, just because they'd got the label which said 'mother', everyone else got a part of the label that said 'child'..." (p 177)
"knowing when to say nothing ... left a hole in the conversation that the other person felt obliged to fill." (p 202)
"He'd found knowledge and knowledge hadn't helped." (p 232)
"the seeker after truth had found truths instead." (p 232)
"Sin ... is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is." (p 314)
"There was a moment of discontinuity, a feeling of sliced time." (p 399)

April 2017, 425 pages

"Going Postal" by Terry Pratchett

A Discworld Novel.

Conman Moist von Lipwig is recruited by Ankh-Morpork's Tyrant Lord Vetinari to run the defunct Post Office which has lost the competition with the semaphore towers to transmit messages across the Discworld.

This with Pratchett's usual verbal brilliance with at least one joke on every page, this is another fun fantasy novel. Pratchett is on a par with Wodehouse for style.

My favourite moments:

• The hanging of Moist at the start.
• When Lord V offers Moist a choice: either take the job or step through the door behind "and you will never hear from me again" (there is nothing beyond the door and that includes a floor)
• When Moist asks Miss Dearheart "Would you like to have dinner tonight?" and she replies "I like to have dinner every night."
• When Moist explains he was offered a "job for life".

But it's all brilliant really.

April 2015; 488 pages