Mort by: Terry Pratchett

Sometimes a book will come along and reach deeply into the heart of the reader and not let itself go until you’ve finished.  Sometimes it’s because of an amazing plot, sometimes it’s because of amazing characters, and sometimes (just a few sometimes mind you) it’s because it’s a book that comes around at just the right time to read.  Something similar to all three of these things happened to me when reading Terry Pratchett’s fourth Discworld novel, Mort, or as I would have called it Death’s Apprentice.  Mort is the first Discworld novel that Terry Pratchett would describe in his own words as a good book and is the first in the series to feature Death as a major character.  Yes, he had appearances in the other books, but here he’s really one of the highlights.

Death’s motivations for taking on an apprentice are varied, but include two major points.  First, he wishes his adopted daughter Ysabell to have someone her own age to talk to and second, he’s not quite satisfied with his lot in life.  Oh yes he realizes life and Death isn’t fair, that if he leaves his position whoever replaces him will be worse than him because he will remember living, and that he really doesn’t have a choice in the matter.  None of this matters as he tries it anyway and Pratchett writes Death in such a way that you really feel bad for the guy.  He’s somehow the most human and inhuman character of the novel.  He has the power to stop time, slice reality, yet his horse’s name is Binky and he likes cats.  He doesn’t quite understand the concepts of love or fun; music and dancing cause him to be flustered; he can be drunk and sober whenever he wishes; he drinks an entire bar; and yet the climax of the novel is an ultimatum: a fight between him and Mort.  This is where in the novel he is presented as an extremely menacing figure ready to kill Mort, yet in the final scene he is adorably grateful that he was invited to Mort and Ysabell’s wedding.

Ysabell made her first appearance in The Light Fantastic and here in Mort she’s gotten a bit of a change in the character department.  She’s still crazy and immediately dislike’s Mort when her father brings him home, which means that by the end of the novel they are married happily.  She has been sixteen for thirty years because time does not work the same in Death’s domain.  She’s been annoying Albert, Death’s manservant/butler/closest thing to friend, by taking books out of Death’s library about girls and reading them.  She has extreme sexual tension with Mort and they eventually find themselves the duke and duchess of a land, due to Mort’s meddling with time.  Of course Mort meddles with someone’s fate because he has some sort of attraction and this is where the book falters.  Princess Kelli is supposed to be who we are rooting for as she is accidentally saved from assassination by Mort while doing the Duty and while the plot revolves around her not being dead, Pratchett cuts back to her plot too many times for comfort and it gets boring.  She’s just there so we can get to the Unseen University with Albert, fix reality, and get Mort and Ysabell set up as a couple.

Albert is a much more entertaining character, even if he is a bit minor.  He’s your standard curmudgeonly old man who does his job, is good for a bit of a chat, but is harboring a great secret about his past.  He’s actually the founder of the Unseen University, where we actually get a cameo from Rincewind which is entertaining, and he’s probably able to keep Death calm and convince him to get back to his job.  He also becomes afraid of Mort when Mort starts to become Death which is an intriguing transformation, if not a complete one.  Mort is the emotional centerpiece of the novel.  Pratchett brings him quickly into the hearts of the reader by setting him up as the black sheep of his family.  He is sent to be picked up as an apprentice and has to wait until midnight, when all the other candidates are gone before Death comes along to make him his apprentice.  He’s not emotionally stable, probably stemming from his bad family life, and cannot help himself in saving a poor girl when he should have been doing his job and leading her on to the next life.  His quick wit and quick understanding of Death and his ways is something that really endears the reader to him further.  His slow transformation into the new Death happens by a few words in the same text style of small capital letters that Death’s dialogue uses.  His eyes become blue and he begins to lose control of himself.  He is a great character and he and Ysabell’s romance actually works well.  Mort as a novel gets an 8/10.