Mort

Fearing my current read was rather stolid and worthy, I detoured for a delightful reread of this, the fourth Discworld novel, which I had read twice about 25 years ago and listened to a radio adaptation ten years ago.
Death, an anthropomorphic personification who has been introduced in earlier Discworld novels, takes on an apprentice, Mortimer, or Mort for short. This is early Discworld, so there are plenty of gags and puns, with a wonderfully gentle humour. However , more than the earlier novels, the story which purportedly centres on the kingdom of Sto Lat, nips along at an engaging pace, with welcome visits to the Unseen University and The Mended Drum in Ankh Morpork, and with a satisfying deus ex machina resolution.
This book feels show more like the first mature plot driven Discworld novel and is a great book to read to start sampling the series, if you aren’t sure that you don’t want to commit to a forty book sequential read.

“THERE WAS ANOTHER THING, said Death. He reached under his robe again and pulled out an oblong shape inexpertly wrapped and tied with string.
IT’S FOR YOU, he said, PERSONALLY. YOU NEVER SHOWED ANY INTEREST IN IT BEFORE. DID YOU THINK IT DIDN’T EXIST?
Mort unwrapped the packet and realized he was holding a small leather-bound book. On the spine was blocked, in shiny gold leaf, the one word: Mort.”
A great read. show less

Pratchett, simply put, makes me laugh unexpectedly.

Characterization is the thing that usually sells me on a book. I'm admittedly a slow reader, thanks to a family that sees a person with an open book as an invitation to pull up a chair and chat. So engaging characters helps me to push through the "where was I, what was happening again," moments from where I left off and where I have to begin again. DEATH is absurdly human and funny, and absolutely terrorizing when he needs to be. His new apprentice Mort has a lot to learn, and he does through hilarious trial and error. Ysabell, DEATH's daughter is a female character with substance, which is always a welcome sight.

Thanks for the entertainment, Mr. Pratchett, wherever your wonderful soul show more may be. show less

This was my second foray into Pratchett’s Discworld universe. The first was The Hogfather, so it was a little backwards (what with Mort being the first of the books centered around Death, and one of the main characters from The Hogfather being the daughter of two of the characters from Mort)… but thankfully for the most part it doesn’t seem one has to read this series in order. (Which is a VERY good thing considering there are over 30 books in the series so far and I can just read them as I acquire them.)

Since it has been so long since I read The Hogfather (three years, as is my typical custom with advancing my way through series’) there were quite a lot of things that surprised me about this.

First and foremost was the narration show more itself. I mean, I knew it was random. I knew it was funny. I didn’t realize how much it would remind me of reading Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (more about that later). In fact, when I got to the first footnote, I had to call the BF immediately in order to read it out to him – he also was strongly reminded of Adams’ writing. Read this footnote for yourself, about daylight on the Disc:

Practically anything can go faster than Disc light, which is lazy and tame, unlike ordinary light. The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according o the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles – kingons, or possibly queons – that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed.

What do you think about that?

But that wasn’t where I found the similarities to Adams ended. I found that the main character, Mort, was VERY much like someone I would expect to find in Hitchhikers’ – Arthur Dent himself, in fact. And this, my friends, is where I think that this book is superior to Hitchhikers. See, my beef with that series has always been that Arthur Dent never has any character growth and that quite frankly I don’t care whether he lives or dies. Mort, on the other hand, had all of Dent’s characteristics at the beginning but throughout the book grew and changed, to the point where it was hard to recognize him as the same bumbling idiot from the beginning of the book. He becomes, as Pratchett’s own characters call it, more real. And that would be why I enjoyed this so much more than I had ever enjoyed the first four of the Hitchhikers books that I have read.

All of the characters in this book were wonderful, in fact. Death, himself, is just so unique. While he has no human characteristics, his yearning to understand humanity is something we all do, as is his desire to understand others and to be lonely because no one wants to just hang out with you – in fact, in that sense, he may be more human than any other character in this book.

I’m happy that I finally had the chance to delve more deeply into the Discworld books, and I’m definitely looking forward to reading more in this series. Actually, I’m looking forward to reading more in this genre – this book has put me back into the mood for fantasy of the non-urban variety. It’s about time. It used to be all I read and yet I haven’t really been that interested in a very long time. But, now I can be excited for the fantasy books I have on la TBR! Huzzah huzzah!

The Bottom Line
Thoroughly enjoyable! Highly recommended, though most fantasy fans have probably already read it. show less

This was my introduction to the discworld and is still (just about) my favourite.
Death comes to all of us, when he came to Mort, he offered him a job. This is the first in the series to feature Death. The death of the disk world is, in his own words, AN ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION, meaning that he looks how people imagine he does, So he's a skeleton that walks, talks (in block capitals like lead being dropped on granite), eats curry and rides a horse called Binky. Which only goes to show you never can tell.
Where he gets the idea of hiring an apprentice is never quite explained, but he end up hiring Mortimer (Mort for short). There is a host of trouble, which starts when death takes the evening off and leaves "the Duty" to Mort - show more the part of his body that does the thinking isn't his brain. Reality becomes confused in a mess of teenage emotions and misunderstandings. Captures that awkward phase in life very well and turns it into a hilarious disaster of epic proportions.
You know what? it doesn't matter how many times I read this, I still love it. I tried reading it a bit more critically this time, but it still had me under its spell. I get the impression that Pratchett is an intelligent & erudite man, and that his does his readers the credit of assuming that they are equally intelligent. He doesn't explain all of the references he makes between that reality and this, he just assumes you're going to recognise them. If I could give it more than 5 stars I would - 11 out of 10 every time.

Added 31Oct14
Another re-read while sitting in hospital waiting room and on a train - for which something light and easy to pickup and put down is essential. It's the details that I love. The small things that seem inconsequential, but together they make a complete package.

Re-read 2022.
It has been far too long since I last read this. At one level it is like I am 16 again and I'm discovering this fantastical universe for the first time. It is magical, and bizarre, but he never treats it with anything less than with respect - it's a combination that works really well. Pratchett holds a mirror up to the world, and it doesn't always reflect back the world as it is - some times it is as we wish it were or fear it is. It's brilliant and yes that may well be the rose tinted glasses or the glass or red talking, but I don't care. I love every minute of this. Death might just be my favourite character in the entire series, I love the way he is presented, the dichotomy he represents and how entirely human he appears. show less

Mort, Mort, MORT. His name is Mort, not boy or that fellow or you there or sir. Oh and he's changing fast; becoming realer than real and more solid by the day, brown eyes becoming blue fireballs and that voice - oh boy, that voice. And he has the weight of the universe on his shoulders.

I wouldn't say Mort is ambitious, nay, maybe stubborn and determined? I mean, that combination alone is bound to upset the apple cart. From waiting until the very last stroke of midnight to be apprenticed right up to the duel of fates...just kidding - but there is a duel of sorts. And everything in between. Mort and Death are actually quite symbiotic. Mort carrying out the task that Death carries out and Death having a quasi-existential crisis inside show more multiple fabrics of time. In the end, I have to say I believe Death feels affection, familial attachment even but I won't go so far as to say Death feels love. Oh but he sure does love curries. WHY WOULDN'T I LOVE CURRY? ~ I imagine Death asking in that voice.

I will say this, Sir Terry Pratchett took death and made the entity feel relatable. I have adored the personification of death in a few books, The Book Thief, Under The Whispering Door, Sandman but this is the first time I found myself laughing out loud and blurting out between tears "Gosh I love Death" which granted kind of freaked me out at first.

In the end, this is the WEIRDEST love story out there and I totally dig it. show less

Death takes on an apprentice then takes some time off vacation that results in some interesting events on the Disc in the fourth book of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The idea of having the Disc's Grim Reaper as a major character who is interested in experiencing the "fleshy" side of things could have turned into disaster if not handled right, but Pratchett just uses it to create more laughs and hilarious situations for not only Death but his apprentice Mort, daughter Ysabell, and servant Albert. The mistakes of Mort as he tries to properly fulfill the role of his boss and his resulting continual screw ups in trying to fix his mistakes without informing Death while dealing with two other living occupants of Death's timeless show more domain.

Ever since watching the miniseries based on Hogfather, I have been waiting to read a Discworld book in which Death was the central character and I wasn't disappointed. After finishing this book I can't wait to see what else Pratchett has up his sleeve for Discworld. show less

Having finished the final Discworld novel earlier this year, and having recently marked the first anniversary of Terry Pratchett's passing, this seemed like a good time to start a re-read of the series, or at least a partial one. Plus, a friend of mine is currently reading the Discworld books for the first time, and there's nothing like watching someone else discovering something you've loved to make you nostalgic for it.

I figured I'd start with the Death books, mainly because Death is probably my favorite character in the entire series. Well, OK, maybe it's a toss-up between him and Granny Weatherwax, but I remember liking the Death books, overall, a little more than the witches ones.

I was, however, a teensy bit nervous about show more revisiting this one. I remembered it as possibly my favorite of the series, but that doesn't seem to be a widely shared opinion, and it seemed very likely to me that the only reason I remember it with such fondness is because it's the point where I fell in love with the series, not because it was actually a standout.

Well, there may be something in that, but if there is, I don't care, because I loved it this time, too. Admittedly, the plot is slighter than most of the others, but that's not at all a problem, as this one is really all about the characters and the world-building. (And the witty writing, of course.) And I don't care if the ending features an almost literal deus ex machina, either, it still left me feeling all warm and fuzzy. There may be a couple of oddities here due to this being very early in the series and Pratchett not having worked out all the details of his world and its inhabitants yet, but they're pretty minor.

My affection for Discworld's Death has only been reinforced by revisiting his first appearance as a major character, too. I confess, I am something of a sucker for this particular character type: the inhuman outsider looking in on humanity with a sort of wistful affection but a limited amount of understanding. And Pratchett captures that in a deft, subtle way that hints at a lot of complexity inside that fleshless skull. (Or, y'know, wherever it is that Death keeps his complexity.)

Much as I enjoyed this re-read, though, there is a note of melancholy to it, too. Because it's impossible not to compare the prose in this one to that of the last few Discworld books, written after a particularly cruel and unfair manifestation of a particularly cruel and unfair disease got its evil hooks into Pratchett's brain. And the contrast is hard to ignore: the more recent books may be perfectly decently written, with occasional flashes of bright wit, but they don't remotely come close to the exuberant, playful linguistic cleverness that's evident in almost every paragraph of Mort. Death has it right: there is no justice.

Anyway. I will definitely be continuing to re-visit the Disc from time to time over the course of, I don't know, maybe the next year or so. Re-reading the entire series is entirely too daunting a project for me, I'm afraid, but I am planning on at least reading through the rest of the Death books, and then the City Watch ones

And I'm still sad that there will be no more Discworld books from Sir Terry, but this exercise has reminded that all the ones he already gave us are still sitting on my shelves waiting to be loved all over again, and that makes me happy. show less