Hogfather

Terry Pratchett

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

It's the night before Hogswatch. And it's too quiet.

There's snow, there're robins, there're trees covered with decorations, but there's a notable lack of the big fat man who delivers the toys...

He's gone.

Susan the governess has got to find him before morning, otherwise the sun won't rise. And unfortunately her only helpers are a raven with an eyeball fixation, the Death of Rats and an oh god of hangovers.

Worse still, someone is coming down the chimney. This time he's carrying a sack instead of a scythe, but there's something regrettably familiar...

HO. HO. HO.

It's true what they say.

'You'd better watch out...'

Hogfather is the twentieth Discworld novel.

'I'm addicted to Terry Pratchett.'

'The Discworld oeuvre works on the principle of subverting anything that stands still long enough to be subverted.'

'... his genius is for pushing logic to such limits that it reels with the shock.'

'Our best comic novelist.'

Review by Chrissi (310701) Rating (8/10)

Review by Chrissi
Rating 8/10
I don't think that I have read this one before, I have kind of got a bit behind the last few Discworld novels, so it was great to get to the end of those that I have read before and onto the new ones.

Hogfather is a Death novel, and we get to see his grand-daughter Susan again. Susan is trying to be normal, and has taken a post as a governess to a family, where the children of the house have been threatened with bogey men under the beds and the bears who get you when you step on the cracks. Susan has got a poker which she uses to get rid of these pests, who are shocked that she can see them, and then uses the poker, when only children are supposed to see them!!

I started giggling almost as soon as I picked up the book, because the wizards are being as wizard-like as ever. Ridcully has found a door into a room that he did not know was there, which turns out to be a bathroom designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson, reason enough you would have thought to board up the door and leave a sign saying not to enter. Well, not for Ridcully, anyway.

The Auditors are up to their tricks again, and engage the services of the Assassins Guild to kill someone, who it is we are unsure, but the assassin given the contract is Mr. Teatime, a strange character who enjoys killing, which is really quite bad form for an assassin.

What is going on, we have to wonder... Death, in the meantime, is trying to take over the post of the Hogfather, with the sleigh and the pigs pulling it all over the world in one night to be able to deliver all the presents to the children. Leaving hoofprints and sleigh marks over the roofs of the houses with Albert drinking all the sherry and eating the pies.

This is all very confusing, until we start getting gnomes and fairies all over the place, fulfilling very strange roles, like Bilious the God of Hangovers, and the Verucca Gnome, sort of like the Tooth Fairy but not.

Anyway, it transpires that as well as the Hogfather going missing, the Tooth Fairy has also disappeared as well, adding to the mystery. Susan tries to solve the mystery, while Death keeps doing the job of the Hogfather, and the Wizards are all getting ready for the largest feast on the last night of the year. Peculiar and peculiar...

I loved this, it has lots of bits of the silly things that children think, like places where the sky is blue and just sits across the top of the page, where houses have a door and four windows, with a curly bit of smoke coming out of the roof, you know, you've seen pictures like this before, but finding that it could be a real place is quite disconcerting.
Chrissi (31st July 2001)