As cliché as it sounds, I don’t even know where to begin with this review of the literary triumph that is ‘Reaper Man’ by Terry Pratchett. The eleventh book in the Discworld series, the second in the Death narrative, I didn’t know anything about Reaper Man going into it apart from its placement in a long running fictional fantasy epic and left with the feeling that this is quite possibly one of, if not THE best read of 2025.
Reaper Man carries on narratively from where its predecessor ended, with Death being fired from his position as he has committed the most egregious, most terrifying, most (Insert synonym for terrible here) sin imaginable… He developed a personality!
There is so much good to find in Reaper Man, from its larger-than-life characters, its humour that had me laughing out loud, or the emotional gut punches that hits one like a tonne of bricks. There’s all the chaos and makings of a Pratchett novel clearly here, but it’s a slightly more organised chaos.
Like, the story crosses so many people’s paths, and there’s not one where I think ‘Oh, he wasn’t very funny’ or ‘Oh, he didn’t really service the story that much’. Everyone has a place here, even the literal Bogeyman who feasts on rats and hides behind bedroom doors.
And I don’t know it it’s because I’m still in my early twenties, but what the book had to say about mortality and especially about the meaning of life just really connected with me, about how we spend our time and who we spend it with.
I’m trying to keep this review spoiler free because Reaper Man really is best experienced going in blind; Specifically I wanted to talk a lot more about the story and jokes, but I think the effect would be cheapened by having someone try to explain some of these concepts rather than having you, the reader, experience it for yourself. I’d recommend reading Reaper Man’s predecessor, ‘Mort’, the fourth Discworld book to get a feel about Death’s arc up to this point and where the story draws narrative roots from, but like all Discworld books, there’s no necessary order to read it from.
‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt was contender for best book of the year until Reaper Man came along and not only blew it out of the proverbial water, but proceeded to eat its lunch in front of it too. This one really has to be read to be believed, and as someone who has never read Pratchett before May 2025, I’m so glad that a book like this entered the TGBC rotation.
Mitchell Porteous (Gladstone Chapter)
Want to read this? Grab a copy here.