Hogfather
Categories: [ Books/Discworld ]
The Auditors hire Mr. Teatime the assassin to kill the Hogfather. On Hogswatchnight, Death replaces the Hogfather, because someone has to fill the stockings, drink the sherry and leave sooty footprints in front of the fireplace. Meanwhile, at Unseen University, strange gods or fairies appear when someone mentions their existence, particularly the Verruca Gnome, the Eater of Socks and Bilious, the God of Hangovers. They appear because since the disappearance of the Hogfather, there is free belief around, materializing in any kind of plausible divinity. Susan, Death's granddaughter, meets Bilious while she's trying to understand why his grandfather is playing the role of the Hogfather. While investigating with his help the disappearance of Violet, one of the Tooth Fairies' employees, she discovers that Teatime has found a way to enter the world of the Tooth Fairy (following the man who delivers the collected teeth to the Tooth Fairy) and uses the childrens'teeth to control them (that's how, I suppose, he has made them disbelieve in the Hogfather and made him disappear by lack of believers). Teatime was trying to reach the real Tooth Fairy when Susan stops him and returns him to the real world. She then meets the Tooth Fairy who is actually the promordial Bogeyman, who reconverted in collecting children's teeth in order to keep some amount of control over them and continue to instillate fear in their hearts. Then Death comes to pick her up and asks her to save the Hogfather (gods never really die) before the Auditors delete him for good. Once she has saved him, Death takes her back to the real world, where she manages to kill Teatime before he kills Death (he planned to use Death's own sword that he stole form Susan in the house of the Tooth Fairy). After that, all the extraneous fairies disappear.
Read it again.