There wasn’t enough Death in this, but then again, he’s done all his growing already in other books, so that was probably the smart choice. I still really enjoyed it.
The actual main characters of this book are Death’s granddaughter, Susan, who has reached the ultimate peak of her badassdom; a history monk named Lu-Tze; and his apprentice, Lobsang. The history monks are cool. They live in this place where Time doesn’t really exist, and their job is to basically monitor history, and in a sense Time, and protect both when and where they can. When Death learns that once again someone is attempting to build the world’s first truly accurate clock, he knows that only bad things will follow, and Susan, and Lu-Tze and Lobsang get dragged in.
The bad guys in this one were actually really great. They’re called The Auditors, and they are these non-corporeal beings who hate the physical universe because everything in it is so messy and antithetical to order and rules, which is basically what they are made of. Only, to try and stop the physical universe from existing and get it under control, dammit, they decide to take on physical form, and well, things go badly for them after that.
This book was very funny and I liked it a lot, but I will admit I don’t actually understand what happened at the end there. I just decided to go with it, though.
Still a little upset Death wasn’t in this more (I wanted him to have one last existential crisis), but apparently there’s one more short story with him at the center, so at least I have that to look forward to. And of course, he always makes cameos in the other Discworld books so it’s not like I’ll be saying goodbye forever (yet). After all just last book I was upset it was the last of the witches, and then Nanny Ogg went and showed up here in a pretty important role.
