Customer Reviews

Mort (Discworld)

5 star:		(88)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mort is an awkward young man who bungles everything he attempts. When his father decides to send him off to be an apprentice, he gets only one offer - from the Grim Reaper himself. It seems like a good job to Mort: free room and board and a secure position in a business that will never run out of clientele. He doesn't even need to die to take the job. Soon Mort is doing some of the reaping himself and he even seems to be gaining maturity, self-confidence, and the ability to walk through walls. He falls in love. But can he manage to help Death harvest souls without making a complete mess of things?

This is the fourth in the wildly funny and inventive Discworld series and the first in the Death story line. Although Death made an appearance in the first three books, this time we are provided with a much closer look at Death's domain through details on his daily routine, his likes and dislikes, his household, and his horse. We meet his daughter and his faithful servant. There are hilarious scenes where Death tries out a few mortal pleasures to learn what they are all about. Only Pratchett could depict Death fly-fishing, getting drunk, or participating in a line dance. Above all else, we find out that Death's not such a bad fellow when we get to know him.

Pratchett continues to flesh out the geography, culture, and magic of Discworld. He addresses the self-healing nature of history and the relationship between fate and death. He presents a coronation, a bevy of bumbling wizards, a deadly beverage called scumble, a library of self-writing books of life, and a dangerous section of Ankh-Morpork known as the Shades. There is also a generous helping of wit, puns, and wicked satire. This is a great read!

Eileen Rieback

When we mere male mortals reach a certain age we sometimes, aware that we are closer to our future death than our past birth, start to act up. We trade the 1981 Honda Civic in for a Corvette convertible, quit our old job to write a great novel, and have even been known to trade in our wives or significant others for a younger, newer model. It's known on Earth as a mid-life crisis. But on Discworld, and in the hands of the master Terry Pratchett, a banal mid-life crisis is turned into another one of his hilarious and thought filled romps. Through Pratchett's hilariously skewed prism this crisis is not being experienced by a mortal but rather by the harbinger of death, the aptly named DEATH. What we have is a mid-death crisis. Death may, like an ever-rolling stream, bear all its sons away but DEATH seems more than a bit tired of doing all the bearing away.

Terry Pratchett's Mort tells a rather simple tale. DEATH is looking for an apprentice. Young Mortimer, one of life's simple trusting souls is a young man with little career prospects. He is ungainly and spends a bit too much time thinking random thoughts. Mort's dad and relatives find him to be a well-intentioned but generally useless young man. Dad has been told that becoming an apprentice will get Mort off his hands and teach him a trade. So off to town they go for `apprentice day' in the market square. As luck would have it, DEATH arrives and takes Mort on as his apprentice.

Mort develops in the expected Pratchett manner. The relationship between Mort and DEATH, and the chores Mort performs to learn his trade, seem very similar to that in the movie Karate Kid. Shoveling poop is not immediately relevant to learning how to become the messenger of death yet Mort takes to his tasks well. Mort seems to enjoy living at DEATH's house and enjoys the food prepared by Albert, who may not be quite what he seems. He doesn't seem to get along to well with DEATH's daughter, Ysabell but that again may not be quite what it seems.

Within no time DEATH is entrusting Mort with more responsibility while he experiments with drinking, dancing, and a stint as the best short order cook in Ankh-Morpork. Meanwhile, Mort, left to his own devices makes a mess of things in short order. Specifically, Mort falls for the heavenly charms of a Princess and fails to bring her over to the next world. This of course causes no end of confusion as the natural order of things on Discworld has been greatly disturbed.

As with most Discworld books, events proceed at a furious pace followed by a conclusion that, like death itself, is inevitable. For any Pratchett fan, of which I am one, the joy in the journey and not in getting to the conclusion. Along the way we are treated to the usual array of cultural references and little jokes. When Albert mutters "s-odomy non sapiens" under his breath Mort asks what that means to which Albert replies "buggered if I know." When DEATH notes he is closing out a bar, alone, at a quarter to three, Pratchett tracks the lyrics to Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen's "One for My Baby". It is priceless.

Last, this is a stand-alone Discworld book. Although some recurring characters make cameo appearances the reader does not really need to be overly familiar with any of the other Discworld books to enjoy Mort. Mort was a pleasure to read.

This fourth book in the Discworld series is the first to achieve truly classic status, in my opinion. Its predecessors were great reads, but Mort is a real riot. The skeleton of the plot has a few cracked bones and seems to be missing whatever connects the setup bone with the conclusion bone, but the humor is more than a saving grace for the awkward ending. Poor Mort is a gangly, clumsy lad seemingly made out of all knees; his father is fond of him but decides to apprentice him to someone else. That someone else turns out to be Death himself (although the father sees him as an undertaker). Mort is whisked off to Death's abode to be trained as Death's apprentice. On his first solo mission, he rips a big hole in the fabric of time by saving a princess from assassination. Death is off trying to experience living, so Mort attempts to make things right with the help of Death's adopted daughter Ysabell (who has been sixteen for thirty five years already), the young wizard Cutwell, the princess, and--with great reluctance--Death's manservant Albert.

This is a riotously funny novel. I can truly say that Death has never been funnier. Being the reaper of souls for untold years does wear a guy down, and Death goes out into the real world to try and discover what life is all about. We find him dancing in a kind of conga line at a party for the Patrician, asking the guy in front of him why dancing around and kicking things over is fun; we see him getting boozed up at a bar and telling his troubles to the bartender, we find him seeking employment and dealing with a normal human customer, and we ultimately find him happily serving as the cook at Harga's House of Ribs. His questions and comments about human life are simple yet complex, and they basically mimic the same kinds of questions we all ask about the purpose of our time on earth. I personally found the funniest scene to be one in which Death takes Mort to a restaurant just after hiring him and tries to figure out why on earth there is a cherry on a stick in his drink--as he keeps returning to this mental conundrum, the scene just gets funnier and funnier.

To some degree, this novel is a bit simplistic compared to later Pratchett writings, but it is a quick, enjoyable read guaranteed to make you laugh out loud at least once. We get a glimpse of some new vistas of the Discworld, and more importantly we gain great understanding and familiarity with Death, his abode, and his way of non-life. The wizard Cutwell is a young, beardless wizard who keeps finding his devotion to wizardry (especially the whole bachelorhood requirement) tested by the beguiling femininity of the princess--his temptation-forced words and actions provide another great source of humor in the book. The cast of important characters if fairly slim in number, but we do meet up with our old friends Rincewind and the librarian momentarily and learn a little more about Unseen University. The ending definitely could have been better, and that is the main weakness of this particular novel. Other Discworld novels will capture your imagination much more forcibly than this one, but few will make you laugh as hard as this one does.

I thought that this book was pretty decent. It doesn't have the depth that I like in later novels, but it is only the fourth one. There really isn't too much to say about it. It was a decent read, nothing spectacular, but fun, funny, and interesting. I recommend it as a lighter read in the discworld novels. I do think that it develops Death's character pretty nicely. Since Death is in just about all, if not every, discworld novel, it helps with some quips and jokes that come in later books. Gives you sort of a nice, warm "I got the inside joke" feel later on in the series.

I've started reading the Discworld series from the beginning since they've started reissuing the ones that were out of print. "Mort" is by far the best I've read so far. If they keep getting better as the series progresses, I'm going to have to restrict myself to reading these books at home because of the weird looks I get if I laugh at a book in public. Death is the most hilarious character in the book. Death has decided that he needs an apprentice so that he can look around a bit, do a bit of sightseeing on the Disc. Mort is the only boy in his town that wasn't offered an apprenticeship... until Death came. He gave Mort the offer of a lifetime. Free room and board, a great job, use of the company horse. What more could Mort ask for? But Death starts spending more and more time away and Mort isn't quite ready to start taking over the job full time. This book explores what happens when someone doesn't die that the entire universe expects to die. Like I said, it's one of the *best* of the series so far, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

Chronologically, this is the fourth of the Discworld novels. In many ways, however, it may be the best place to begin the series, reading a few more and then later going back and filling in "The Colour of Magic", "The Light Fantastic" and "Equal Rites".

"Mort" is the first of the "Death" sub-series witin the larger Discworld series as a whole (which includes "The Reaper Man", "Soul Music" and "Hogfather"). The Death of the Discworld is an interesting character -- and he is very much a *character*, rather than an event or a Presence, though he is those, too. Death, after eons of being basically, well, Death, has decided he wants to understand the Human Condition. I mean, being an awesome Anthropomorphised Personification, feared by virtually all, is all well and good... but he *still* doesn't understand why people put fruit in their drinks.

In this volume, we are introduced to young Mort, a farmer lad who just isn't suited for farming. Or any other trade anyone can think of. So his father takes him to the Hiring Fair in another town, rather in the manner of a man taking a horse that's only lame if you try to ride it to a Fair where no-one has ever seen it or him. But no-one seems willing to take on Mort, even so. Until the stroke of midnight, when a black-cloaked figure on a big white horse rides up...

And so Mort is apprenticed to Death.

He learns to take The Duty, as Death refers to riding out personally as a courtesy to the more important decedents (witches and wizards know in advance when they will die and they and priests expect a personal visit from Death as a professional courtesy, so to speak; Death also appears personally to Kings and Emperors and such). Eventually, Death trusts Mort to do The Duty on his own for a couple of days while Death takes a brief holiday to learn more about humanity.

Which explains why, when a rather nasty Duke attempts to asassinate his beautiful young cousin, before she can take the throne, Mort tries to change things and takes the Duke, not the Princess.

But history has inertia and elasticity, and soon the imbalance between What Is Supposed To Be and What Actually Is begins to threaten reality.

And Death is off on holiday and things keep on Getting Worse.

This is the volume where Pratchett really begins to hit his stride and bring the Discworld to life -- an actual (albeit Strange) place with real (albeit extreme) characters whose problems are often recogniseable variations on our own. He begins to truly master the dry, sometimes sardonic, tone of narration that makes the goings-on so much more funny... and sometimes, unexpectedly, much more sad and throat-catching.

The little touches -- the telling little bits of description not directly involved in the storyline as such but commenting or pointing out, almost as a tour-guide might, really begin to show up here, Unseen University begins to resemble the institution as portrayed in later books, and Pratchett begins explaining more of the physics, meta- and otherwise, of the Discworld.

The perfect introduction to the Discworld -- then, n my opinion, one should temporarily skip over the next three ("Sourcery", "Wyrd Sisters" and "Pyramids") to read "Guards! Guards", the first of the "Guards" subseries, then hop back to "Wyrd Sisters", which plays merry havoc with Shakespeare (particularly The Scottish Play) for a proper introduction to the "Witches" subseries...

After that, you're on your own.

But they're all rousing good fun and will, at least once per volume, make you think a bit, too...

This is the fourth book in Terry Pratchett's books on the Discworld - a flat world, supported on the back of four massive elephants riding on the back of a planet-sized turtle, anything hilarious can happen here, and eventually does. In this book, Death (capital "D", he's the man, or rather the anthropomorphic personification) decides to take an apprentice, and selects Mort, a rather inept young man from the Ramtops. As Death takes less interest in his job, Mort's interests cause him to create a tear in reality.

This is another great Pratchett book. Running several storylines at once, the author succeeds in having all of them move along smoothly. Also, the book contains a goodly dollop of Terry's humor and ironic footnotes. I love the Death books (this one, plus Reaper Man, Soul Music, and Hogfather); in this one Death tries the joys of drinking, dancing, gambling and so forth, all with hilarious results.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

We all know that there is no funnier writer that Pratchett. But fewer of us know that Pratchett, every now and then, stops and steps outside the realm of the simply funny, and enters the realm of what is magical. Now, not all of us are receptive works derived from the latter area of... L-space, i suppose, but, with Mort, Pratchett definitely appealed to a part of me beyond my gigglebox. Mort, while not as abundant in wisdom as say, Small Gods, is simply put a very enchanting and enticing tale about one very unique youth's early job experience, and his very comical romantic pursuits. Moreover, I've always felt that when Pratchett put forth his thoughts on a subject, my own view of that subject got just a -bit- richer, and Mort definitely seems to revolve moreso around romance than any of the other Discworld Novels, and I can honestly say that, since reading it, my love life has never been better. So, once again, thank you, Terry... Thank you very, very much.

What better topic for one of the greatest living satire writers to spoof than death. Pratchett chose the best possible story line for death to quite literally take a holiday. Even outside of the Discworld series, this is a great book.

Death needs an apprentice. At the apprentice fair, Death picks the hapless Mort. Seeming to think that he is tiring of his job, Death takes a holiday which leaves Mort in charge. Inexperienced as Death, Mort has a problematic first day on the job which threatens to alter the course of history when Mort interferes in a death. As Mort struggles to heal reality and the course of history, a resurrected wizard attempts to restore time to coherence and the real Death to viability. While time may heal, Death is never pleased when you foul up his work. Death has unexpected consequences waiting.

This particular Pratchett novel displays the coherence that many of his other books lack. With fewer characters, the story is easier to grasp. To top it off, this book is downright funny. If I had to recommend only one Pratchett book to a first time reader, this may be the one.

Mort has been my second excursion into Discworld after The Truth. And though the earlier book is certainly simpler and more innocent (ie less "knowing"/intertextual/inbred) than The Truth and (I suspect) many of the later novels in the series, it largely holds its own. The concept is irresistible. Mort is a likeable protagonist. Death is just cool. There are plenty of rib-tickling scenes (Death's careers' advice interview is a cracker), the action is swift and engrossing and the ending is full of pathos (a good thing). In fact, as with The Truth, I am mighty impressed by the way Pratchett wraps up his story. That, as any writer, and most readers are well aware, is an often impossibly difficult skill to master. Some of the best writers around - and some of my favourites - fail at this last hurdle.
My biggest gripe with the book is that some of the language used and references feel a little dated now. But that's like carping at the datedness of Wodehouse or Dickens! (ie not a particularly illuminating gripe). Sure, Mort feels a little flimsy and I get the sense that Pratchett at the time of writing was still in the process of exploring the possibilities of Discworld. In other words, it seems a trifle unsophisticated and less fully realized than The Truth (and, presumably, the later novels), much in the same way as The Hobbit introduces a wonderful mythology and characters while merely hinting at the greatness to come. Essential reading, no doubt, but I'm pretty certain it'll be a while before I come across that bona fide 5-star classic that I just know Pratchett either has already written or is bound to write in future. Unfortunately, every single Pratchett book seems to have its champions on Amazon who proclaim it to be the best of the series. And every single one of them also has its detractors who decry its inadequacies. It's quite infuriating! Anyway, enough babbling, I've got Soul Music and Maskerade to plough through! (I've taken to reading at least two Pratchetts (or more) in tandem to save my sanity and so that I don't miss out on the delights of one Discworld sub-genre while I'm exploring another!)