Terry Pratchett's Discworld 04- Mort

Mort

Corgi

Terry Pratchett

1987

Other Terry Pratchett Reviews- The Colour of Magic - The Light Fantastic - Equal Rites - Mort - Sourcery - Wyrd Sisters - Pyramids - Guards! Guards! - Eric - Moving Pictures - Reaper Man - Witches Abroad - Small Gods - Lords and Ladies - Men At Arms - Soul Music - Interesting Times - Maskerade - Feet of Clay - Hogfather - Raising Steam - A Blink of the Screen - Sky1 Adaptations- Dodger - The Long Earth (w Stephen Baxter)

 

"'Sir, what is a curry?' asked Mort.
HAVE YOU EVER BITTEN A RED HOT ICE-CUBE
'No'
CURRY IS LIKE THAT"

With the fourth book in his fantasy-satire series, Terry Pratchett reached his then-creative zenith, taking his first concrete steps into the macabre with this creative and dark coming-of-age adventure story telling the tale of what happened when Death decided to hire an unsuspecting apprentice. Mort, our lead character, is thrown into the deep end of the work of the Grim Reaper, exploring the weirdness that is Death's home, meeting his family, and inevitably causing universe-endangering problems that I won't spoil here. While the themes of exploring the unfamiliar (and hastily running away in fear) from the previous three books still remain, Pratchett embraces his black, Gothic environment to great effect.

The cast of characters is inspired, from Mort, who's a relatively normal, inexperienced country lad who's in way over his head, Albert, grizzled man servant to Death, and the scythed one himself. Previously appearing in each previous Discworld book as the somewhat two-dimensional anthropomorphic personification of death, here Pratchett takes his first step on a character odyssey of massive ambition, creativity and philosophy, as Death starts to really experience the many faucets of humanity and tries to understand it. 

I love this book because it works so equally well on two different levels; on one, it's a dark tale about the life in the dark side, on the mythological edge of reality where any mistakes have apocalyptic reactions. On the other it's about the problems and fears that every youth faces when they get their first real job and, as Mort does here, conspires to royally mess it up as quickly as possible. The stakes are a little higher here, as Mort's disgust at the unfairness of who dies and who doesn't encourages him to try and buck the system (with predictably disastrous results) but it's extraordinary how a book that's literally about death is also so charmingly humane. From Equal Rites onwards many of Pratchett's stories are variations on the classic coming-of-age theme, and early explorations into the idea of narrative causality.

While the character of Death himself would be developed further and perhaps better later on in the series, this is a brilliant beginning and certainly the best of the four books so far, and I (biased fan I am) don't really have any criticism to level at the book whatsoever. A superb title, and one that would be a great choice as a first book to read for anyone looking to get in to the series.