2025 Reading Challenge 24 Hogfather
It has been a long time since I read any Terry Pratchett. I used to read his books religiously as and when they came out in paperback. I loved the Corgi releases with the Josh Kirby covers, so from 1985 until around the mid-90s, I’d be picking these up on the day of release. But after this time, I sort of fell out of love with the books, finding them repetitive, wanting more serious novels, keen to read about certain Discworld characters and less of others, but I’ve come back to them over the years, and I’ve learnt to appreciate just how well written they are, less a knockabout fantasy comedy series.
I’d read Hogfather, and I had a distant memory of the plot and characters. To summarise, when the Discworld’s version of Father Christmas goes AWOL, Death takes his place to keep belief alive, while his granddaughter races within time to save reality from unravelling.
The book started well and introduced a cast with favourites of mine being Arthur and Susan Sto Helit (DEATH’s granddaughter) and their ascerbic interactions. For me, it loses the plot somewhat through the middle sections, the pace of the novel becoming bogged down in side quests and a slightly overly educational treatise on belief.
But in the last third, it picks up, accelerating to some fantastic set pieces and a very satisfying end that I’ll stop my enthusiasm to avoid spoilers.
It has an unpleasant, though shallow, villain in Teatime, pronounced, as he often corrects, Te-ah-tim-eh, which, whilst initially amusing, becomes grating as it is overused.
I probably got more out of the satire and witticisms than I did as a kid. DEATH adds pathos and heart to the book, and the slight knocks I have against it are outweighed by the strengths of the writing and certainly the ideas.
The last word I’ll leave to DEATH, "Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape." It is a statement, at once a little pompous, but also has so much truth about it that you can’t help but set aside any cynicism.
I rated this 7.0 out of 10.
TTRPG Thoughts:
Well, there is now a new Discworld TTRPG and on my Discord, we have a game of it, so potentially I will come back to this holding space and add in feedback from the GM and players. So watch this space. Yep, it’s a cop out!