Reaper Man

Plot

The formless Auditors of Reality, whose job is to keep the universe running smoothly, decide that Discworld's Death must be replaced because he has started to develop a personality. They get permission from a higher being named Azrael and force Death into retirement, handing him a timer whose sand measures his own remaining existence. Freed from his duties, Death travels to a village in the Octarine Grass Country and takes a job as a farmhand for an elderly woman named Miss Flitworth, calling himself Bill Door. Living among the villagers, he gains a deeper understanding of humans, friendship, the experience of being alive, and the worth of life—things he had trouble grasping when he was immortal and simply carrying out his role.

Because Death is no longer doing his job, the life force of dead people has nowhere to go and builds up, causing poltergeists, ghosts, and other strange events. The most prominent case is the recently deceased wizard Windle Poons in Ankh-Morpork, who becomes a zombie. After various mishaps, including being confronted by his colleagues from Unseen University, he ends up at the Fresh Start Club, a group that advocates for the rights of the undead. Meanwhile, the wizards investigate the unusual happenings in the city. Together, the Fresh Start Club and the wizards find that a parasitic life form is invading the city, feeding on it, and eventually turning into a giant shopping mall. They manage to destroy it.

Eventually, the collective fear of humanity creates a New Death, a being without any form or personality, which arrives to claim Bill Door as his time runs out. But Door has been preparing for this moment and outwits and destroys the New Death. After this victory, Door reclaims his identity as Death and goes to confront Azrael, the Death of all things across every universe and therefore his own superior. The Auditors witness Death's success and complain to Azrael that Death has broken many rules of universal order. Death argues to Azrael that Deaths must care, or else they cease to exist, leaving only Oblivion—and even Oblivion must eventually come to an end.