Given my often silly personality I should have loved this book. But it wasn’t for me. The silliness got in the way of the plot, or at least what I could understand of it. It’s Hogswatch night and Hogfather has disappeared. Has Mr Teatime killed him? Meanwhile, Death dresses up as Hogfather & goes on the rounds to keep the belief alive. Susan, their kind-of human descendant, seeks to make things right with the help of some absent-minded wizards and maybe a gnome or two. I so wanted to like this book so I could read the series. Husband has them all and leant me this book. But when I struggle so to understand the book in spite of the silliness I figured it’s not the book for me. ( )

A surprisingly poor outing into the Discworld. There are plenty of humorous jokes - mostly at the start - but unlike some of the earlier Discworld stories, this is just a series of ramblings to fill out an excess of pages (100-150 more than some of the superior earlier books). Because all the characters are pre-established elsewhere, there’s little introduction to them if you have skipped straight to here out of order and instead you end up with a series of disjointed goings on that eventually meander their way to a plot that I’d already worked out long before the characters had.

Part of the problem lies in trying to force jokes and satire into every sentence and every inch of dialogue and it slows everything down needlessly. Terry at his best is extremely funny, but British humour relies on knowing when it’s time to land the joke. If all you are doing is joking, then you end up diluting the humour too much and it becomes instead tiresome and annoying like it does here. He knew this when he wrote things like Equal Rites and Guards! Guards! which balance the storytelling with the satire perfectly., but appears to have over indulged by this point in the series.

Most of the characters are all fairly homogenous as well. Death and Teatime stand out and Death's relationship with Susan had the strongest emotional ties in the book, but most of the rest talk and act the same. That was never quite the case in the early Discworld where stronger identities and personalities existed. Having missed Soul Music and the books around it, Susan, Hex and some of the supporting cast have back stories which are alluded to, but too often felt like I was missing out on important connections.

It’s OK and a bit of fun, but way below the strongest of his works. Not one I recommend except to diehard fans of the series or those continuing them in the order they were written - it’s just too much of a mess at times. I’m genuinely baffled how it’s regarded as one of the best. Of the 15 or so I’ve read so far, it’s my least favourite. ( )

A truly marvellous read in the festive period.
The book is packed with Pratchett's wonderful observations and beautiful prosr.

Hogfather is thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, not least because of the significant roles for DEATH and Susan in the unfolding drama.

This is very Happy Hogswatch reading made me feel very festive. ( )

I'm not sure what to make of this one. It's good in its way, but I find it rather too complicated and serious overall—although of course there are bits of humour scattered through it.

It has Death's granddaughter Susan in it, whom I always like; Death himself is in quite good form, and his attendant Albert.

But I'm not normally keen on Pratchett's villains, and here we have a whole bunch of them: the Auditors, Mr Teatime, and his hired gang. I really think the Discworld would be better without the Auditors; they're grey and rather dull, and do nothing for me. ( )

Death is doing duty as the Hogfather, filling stockings and driving the sleigh. Meanwhile Susan Sto Helit is tracking down the tooth fairies with the help of the oh god of hangovers (temporarily cured).
I love Susan and Death's a close second but I have a really hard time reading this novel. I don't know what it is but I had deep resistance every time I picked it up until about half way and even then it wasn't easy to read. Maybe it's the villain of the story (I really don't like him) or his cronies. It's a good story, just not for me. ( )