Reaper Man
Reaper Man is a fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, published in 1991. It is the 11th Discworld book and the second to follow Death as a main character. The story starts when the Auditors, beings who enforce the rules of reality, decide Death is getting too human and order him to live like a mortal. He becomes a farmhand named Bill Door in the Octarine Grass Country and works for Miss Flitworth, a kind old woman.
In Ankh-Morpork, the life force of the dead starts to build up because Death isn’t doing his job properly. Ghosts and poltergeists appear, and the recently dead wizard Windle Poons hopes for reincarnation.
Meanwhile, an undead-rights group called the Fresh Start Club, led by Reg Shoe, helps uncover that the city is being invaded by a parasitic lifeform that hatches from snow-globe–like eggs. The parasite’s middle form is a shopping trolley, and its third form is a dangerous shopping mall that the heroes destroy.
A New Death arrives to replace Death, but Death outsmarts it and absorbs the other Deaths back into himself, with the exception of the Death of Rats (and later the Death of Fleas). Death also confronts Azrael, the Death of the Universe, arguing that Deaths must care or there will be Oblivion. He asks for a little more time.
Death reunites with Miss Flitworth and offers her unlimited dreams. She asks to attend the Harvest Dance, and they join the villagers for a night of dancing. As dawn breaks, Miss Flitworth realizes she died hours earlier, and Death guides her to the afterlife with her fiancé.
Back in Ankh-Morpork, Death takes Windle Poons to his afterlife. The book ends with a playful debate about what the Death of Rats should ride—a dog or a cat.
A fragment of Reaper Man was adapted in 1996 as Welcome to the Discworld, a short animated film featuring Christopher Lee as Death.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:21 (CET).