As the reaction to my Facebook post about Pyramids (Discworld 7) attests, the Discworld novels are hugely loved by a community of readers across the world. People love the novels for many reasons, but I think one of the most common reason is the enormous empathy that Sir Terry shared with his readers. He knew our weaknesses and frailties, and saw the inner strength in the most abject of us, the deluded, the vulnerable. No-one is so much of a misfit that they don’t have a place in Ankh-Morpork’s Watch; no-one is beyond redemption, as Moist von Lipwig’s story shows. And the weakest and frailest of us all know that one day we will face death, or perhaps Death. So it is his crowning achievement that he made Death such a human, kind character, and that novels such as Reaper Man which are all about Death and death, can be so warm and touching.

Ok, I get it, enough fan-boying, if that’s a word. In this the eleventh Discworld novel, the Auditors of Reality object to Death developing a personality, so decide to ‘retire’ him. In facing up to the death of Death he leaves his job collecting souls, and spends his remaining days working as a farm hand imaginatively named Bill Door for the elderly Miss Flitworth, another of STP’s astonishingly well realised older female characters.

But the absence of death is not entirely unproblematic. A ‘life force’ (of some kind, STP is vague on the detail) starts to cause poltergeist activity and lots of other weirdness. Windle Poons a senior wizard is disappointed not to be met by death on his passing, and becomes a charmingly polite but determined zombie, joining an undead-rights group. The ‘action’ scenes in which Ankh-Morpork is slowly invaded by a parasitic lifeform which evolves into a shopping centre are heavily cut between the Bill Door scenes, but this doesn’t effectively disguise their clumsiness as satirical comment on consumerism. In the novel’s touching climax Death is given a little more time and spends it on a last dance with Miss Flitworth.

One of the many joys of a Discworld reread is rediscovering the origin stories of some of Sir Terry’s wonderful characters. Reg Shoe, undead rights activist, first appears here, although it is not until much later in the glorious Night Watch that we discover how he came to zombiedom. The Death of Rats also first appears in this novel. But Death takes centre stage here, rightly so, and carried the novel on his bony shoulders. Another triumph Sir Terry.