As the second (maybe third) book I have read from the Discworld series by pre-eminent fantasy humourist Terry Pratchett, I was uncertain whether I would like this story of Death taking over from Hogfather (i.e. Discworld Santa) when the holiday’s iconic fat man is unavailable. My previous Discworld experience taught me that the humour would be incredibly nerdy, clever, witty and dry, and that really excited me. However, I also knew that the writing would be very dense, not that it would be hard to understand, but that there would be a lot of detail packed into each paragraph. Plus, there would be many asides and jokes mentioned in passing that would be easy to miss. That turned out definitely to be true of my experience with Hogfather. We follow a few groups of characters, but mainly Death (the skeletal, scythe-bearing spectre that severs us from this mortal coil) himself, along with Susan (a governess by day, but Death’s granddaughter by night) who is manipulated into investigating the disappearance of Hogfather and why her grandfather has taken on the mantle. Additionally, we spend a lot of time with the faculty of Unseen University (Discworld’s premier wizard school) who are also bothereed by the fact that their thoughts seem to be conjuring up lesser gods all over the place, and a band of mercenaries led by an assasin named Teatime (not pronounced the way it looks, if you know what’s good for you) who may be involved with what’s happened to Hogfather.

As you can tell from that brief synopsis (which does not do justice to all the other characters and plot threads that run through this story), there is a lot of bizarrely hilarious fun to be expected. Thankfully, I was not disappointed in that I have not laughed out loud this much while reading for a long time. Pratchett’s descriptions hit the perfect tone of colourful, wry, and sarcastic. For example, one of the mercenaries was cleverly described by this quote: “He was known to Ankh-Morpork’s professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right.” Unfortunately this kind of writing also demanded that a lot of attention and focus be paid, otherwise it became difficult to follow the plot and what was happening. Also each time one of the many (a few too many, in my opinion) quirky characters are introduced, it’s not always clear who or what they are, and it takes some time to absorb. It wasn’t even clear for the first half of the book what the main story arc was supposed to be. I didn’t understand why we we kept cutting to Susan, or why Death was apparently pretending to be Hogfather. (Unfortunately, I know of quite a few people who gave up on this book before getting too deeply into it because they felt confused and disengaged.)

Nevertheless, by the second half, things were more focused and fell better into place (though there was still an odd chapter where the workers in a fancy restaurant cook up old boots as gourmet dishes, and I’m still not quite sure why) and the story was a bit more engaging. The final quarter had an even bigger shift in tone when, after I kind of thought the story was done, the true climax of the story took on a more mythical, primordial quality, and then (in a way that reminded me a bit of Lord of the Rings) the final final ending was actually a series of endings where we revisit each of the character groups we’ve seen (some of which I had forgotten) to tie things up for them. Suffice to say, this book was quite an onion.

As to whether reading Hogfather has encouraged me to dive deeper into Discworld, it definitely has. I really enjoyed meeting all these characters, who presumably recur in other volumes of the series (especially the Unseen University wizards) and the story, while being somewhat confusing, was much less confusing than The Colour of Magic (Book 1) which I read last year. The humour is right up my alley, and I really enjoy the newer Penguin audio recordings that are out there now (including the one I listened to of Hogfather). I have a few other of the Discworld favourites/classics in my library and look forward to checking them out soon.

3 stars

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