Reading progress update: I've read 90%.
Something thought provoking:
"There was something here, he thought, that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans had built a world inside a world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflects the landscape. And yet...and yet...
Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they want to escape from - hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in."
I sat and considered this for a bit and realized it's fairly true.
Then the idiot mad duke ruins the mood and confuses Death and I giggled like an idiot myself:
Death says:
"I assure you, you are not dead. Take it from me.
The duke giggled. He had found a sheet from somewhere and had draped it over himself, and was sliding along some of the castle's more deserted corridors. Sometimes he would go "whoo-oo" in a low voice.
This worried Death. He was used to people claiming that they were NOT dead, because death always came as a shock, and a lot of people had some trouble getting over it. But people claiming they WERE dead with every breath in their body was a new and unsettling experience.
"I shall jump out on people," said the duke dreamily. "I shall rattle my bones all night, I shall perch on the roof and foretell a death in the house --"
THAT'S BANSHEES
" I shall if I want said the duke with a trace of earlier determination. " And I shall float through walls, and knock on tables, and drip ectoplasm on anyone I don't like. Ha. Ha."