Hogfather by: Terry Pratchett

 

I’m sitting here, writing this review, six days before Christmas on a Saturday morning where there was nothing better for me to do than to read a book.  Because it is nearly Christmas and it had been far too long and I had read (though not reviewed) Feet of Clay, Hogfather came across my path.  Hogfather is one of those books that has kept itself in my mind since I first read it back in 2015 after the death of Terry Pratchett.  It’s a book that sticks in your mind as do all of the Discworld books because of how Pratchett implements his ideas wrapped in a premise that Kyle Martin (aka KrimsonRogue of The Book Was Better) described as “Death saves Christmas”.  While that descriptor is accurate, it does Hogfather a slight disservice as with all of Pratchett’s work there is much more to the book than meets the eye.  The plot involves the Auditors of Reality, extradimensional beings obsessed with keeping order and undoing entropy, hiring a childlike assassin called Teatime to dispose of the Hogfather (basically Santa Claus).  Doing this would end the world as the Hogfather evolved out of a sacrificial pig which became a god that helped guide humanity out of winter, something that Death takes considerable issue with as he is rather fond of humanity.  Finding the Hogfather dead, Death takes his clothes and takes over his job for the evening while not sending his granddaughter Susan to deal with Teatime.  This plot sounds absolutely absurd like all of the Discworld books, but Hogfather is one of those books which drives home just what it means to be human and what Christmas is all about.

 

The book’s most powerful passages reflect on why people celebrate holidays like this, not because of some superficial or religious belief, but because it makes us people.  The capstone of the book involves lines about how people believe in the little lies, the fantasies like the Hogfather, so they can believe the big ones later on.  It is clearly stated that there is no one right way to celebrate a holiday, and Pratchett scoffs at the cynicism of criticizing Christmas as a pure example of commercialism gone mad.  There are scenes which critique commercialism: the entire sequence in the toyshop which takes up quite a bit of the middle of the book is one giant critique on commercialism and capitalism weaponizing the idea of Santa as an excuse for parents to buy presents, with Death actually giving things away and ending with the City Watch not actually doing anything because you can’t arrest someone for giving away their own property.  Death in the role of the Hogfather, while clearly having a skeletal visage to children, as they don’t have any sense of what death means, still succeeds in convincing them.  They don’t question him as the Hogfather.  Death is the loose cannon in Teatime’s plans, the one who never actually breaks the rules of the universe, only giving his own granddaughter hints at what she should do to help save the Hogfather.

 

While this book is one which is advertised as being about Death, Hogfather really is a story about Susan Sto Helit, introduced in Soul Music and spending her time at the beginning of the book as a governess trying to be normal.  She is the one who actually has to go with Quoth the Raven and the Death of Rats to find a way to defeat Teatime and save the Hogfather.  Susan is a character who takes this no nonsense attitude on just about everything.  She tells the children she’s looking after not to put on a lisp because it makes you seem cuter and more likely, not to be afraid of the monsters because they can be easily dispatched with a kitchen poker, and that everything will eventually be worked out if the right people work on it and things can be put to an end.  This isn’t exactly a story where she learns something about the spirit of Hogswatch, but learns more about other people and herself.  The final scenes with her and Death are better left untouched as they are where the book really hits the reader with one punch.  This is a book about building the relationship between Death and Susan after Soul Music established it as something rather odd.  Overall, Hogfather is a book which knows exactly what it wants to be and is the perfect read for this month, especially as an awful year draws to a close.  10/10.