One of the central theses of the book is that childhood is not a comforting time, but instead is much like adult life written in larger letters, and this sort of high-contrast long-shadowed aesthetic is obeyed by the book itself, which contrasts the humour with quite a lot of killing, a frightening psychopathic serial killer as a villain (and a bunch of murderers as, paradoxically, the ones we sympathise with compared to him), and a number of nightmares come to life.

It is also very dark, and really very creepy.

Runner up prize would have to go to the brilliant double-act of Quoth the Raven and the Death of Rats, but there are laughs on almost every page. The Faculty subplot in particular, irrelevent though it may have been, had me uncontrollably laughing out loud on half a dozen occasions (which is impressive, given the short length of the book), fully justifying its otherwise unjustifiable inclusion. In defence of the book, I’ll say this first and foremost: it’s hilarious. The four storylines can only go together by explictly bending the laws of time and space, and as a result of shoving them all together we miss the most important bit – we see hardly any of Teatime’s actual assassination plot (no, hearing about it in hindsight doesn’t count). The first three storylines intersect only briefly, while the fourth touches on them barely more than tangentially. There are essentially four different storylines: Death delivering presents and learning about the true meaning of Hogswatch (Christmas) Death’s grand-daughter (don’t ask), Susan, trying to put things right Teatime and his merry band of criminals having fun in a strange location and the Faculty of Unseen University, trying to deal with some of the peculiar household gods that are popping into existence as a metaphysical result of the whole affair. With the Hogfather out of action, somebody needs to step in, and that task falls to the ever-helpful (and always eager to explore alternative careers) Death, he of the scythe and the CAPITAL LETTERS VOICE. Santa Claus (or his Discworld equivalent, the Hogfather) is under attack by the dull, life-hating Auditors of Reality, through their chosen tool, the mad, childish assassin Mr Teatime (it’s pronounced teh-ah-tem-eh. Hogfather, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a Discworld novel about Christmas. I’m struggling with a painful (in a good way) book, the nights are drawing in and it’s getting cold… so I read Hogfather.

A new Pratchett comes out, I read it, I get nostalgic for the old days, I worry about whether the old days were only ever in my memory, and so I go and read something else by him.

Hogfather by terry pratchett