Poor Mort! An unsuccessful farmer, not chosen at the Apprentice Fair, until, on the last stroke of midnight, he is hand picked to work as an understudy to Death. His first day on the job Mort impulsively saves a doomed princess, thus challenging Fate and Love and eventually even Death himself. Delightful. ( )

Seven out of ten.Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job. After being assured that being dead was not compulsory, Mort accepted. However, he soon found that romantic longings did not mix easily with the responsibilities of being Death's apprentice... ( )

Not bad for a Pratchett ( )

My first non-Watch Discworld book. I really like Death as a character but none of the others really did it for me. Some things happened pretty abruptly, or too much off-camera. I also got lost for a bit because I mixed up two cities with very similar names. And it's not the book's fault, but I've never cared for that particular plot trope (the dramatic one, not the apprentice set-up). The development of the apprenticeship itself was very well done, however. ( )

Having read this many years ago and remembering little about it other than that I thought it was one of the best of the early discworld books, I decided that Mort was up for a re-read. The basic plot revolves around one of my favourite dsicworld characters - Death - who takes on an apprentice to whom he hands over the grim job of reaping souls. Overall I found the characterisation more superficial than in Pratchett's more reccent works. The storyline, once the plot device of Death taking on an apprentice is put into play, is rather mediocre (with a rather disappointing resolution to the story at the end). Pratchett is on song as far as the humour and the jokes are concerned. Overall this doesn't stand in the top rank of discworld novels, but in delving in the character of Death its still an essential read for Pratchett fans. ( )