★★★★☆ Meet Death

Mort

Terry Pratchett

Mort is, in my opinion, the best of the first four books in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. It is book four in the series, which means it is the best Discworld book I have listened to so far.

Mort is not the first Discworld appearance of Death. (Note: "Death" with a capital D refers to the Discworld character; with a small d to the phenomenon. If it's at the beginning of a sentence, you're on your own.) Death appears in the Rincewind books to complain about Rincewind's failure to keep his appointments. Mort is, however, our first extended view of Death.

Death is not quite what you expect. He does indeed ride a pale horse -- the horse's name is "Binky" -- and carry a scythe with which he reaps souls. But as his daughter Ysabell says, ‘He’s quite nice if you get to know him.’ And he is! He is not a killer-- he recoils at the suggestion.

‘But you’re Death,’ said Mort. ‘You go around killing people!’
I? KILL? said Death, obviously offended. CERTAINLY NOT. PEOPLE GET KILLED, BUT THAT’S THEIR BUSINESS. I JUST TAKE OVER FROM THEN ON. AFTER ALL, IT’D BE A BLOODY STUPID WORLD IF PEOPLE GOT KILLED WITHOUT DYING, WOULDN’T IT?
‘Well, yes—’ said Mort, doubtfully.

He does not live entirely alone. Well, to be accurate, he does not live at all. What I mean is, he shares his residence with a small group of people, his (adopted) daughter Ysabell, his retainer Albert, and, soon, his apprentice Mort. We meet Mortimer before he is apprenticed to Death. Pratchett describes him thus

It was also acutely embarrassing to Mort’s family that the youngest son was not at all serious and had about the same talent for horticulture that you would find in a dead starfish. It wasn’t that he was unhelpful, but he had the kind of vague, cheerful helpfulness that serious men soon learn to dread. There was something infectious, possibly even fatal, about it. He was tall, red-haired and freckled, with the sort of body that seems to be only marginally under its owner’s control; it appeared to have been built out of knees.

You've probably known someone like that or else, perhaps, you have been or are now someone like that.

As for the plot, it's a pretty typical magical apprentice story. But Pratchett's verve and humor make it something special. The audiobook is narrated by Sian Clifford, Peter Serafinowicz, and Bill Nighy. You will have noticed that Death's speech is rendered in capital letters. Clifford is the main narrator, but Death's dialog is in a very deep voice, Serafinowicz or Nighy, I imagine. In fact, this becomes a plot point.

Mort is a lot of fun. And it has the rare virtue, for a Discworld novel, of being fairly self-contained.

Mort on Amazon

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★★☆ Laziness spurs creativity

X-Men (Penguin Classics Marvel Collection) Stan Lee, Jack Kirby (Artist), Roy Thomas, Werner Roth, Don Heck, Neal Adams, Arnold Drake, Gary Friedrich, George Tuska, Ben Saunders (Editor), Rainbow Rowell (Foreword) The X-Men were born when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby , Marvel's premiere creators of new superhero comics, noted that superhero teams such as the Fantastic Four were box-office, so why not start another one? Lee wrote Then once I figured out what powers they'd have ... how did they get their powers? And they were all separate people that weren't connected to each other, so I knew that would be a helluva job. And I took the cowardly way out, and I figured, hey, the easiest thing in the world: they were born that way. They were mutants. In a world in which nuclear weapons tests had in the recent past released lots of radioactivity in to the atmosphere, this appeared to make a lot of sense. As a card-carrying geneticist, I have to tell you that essentially nothin

★★★★☆ "The best account of what it was like to be a creative artist"

A Mathematician's Apology G.H. Hardy First, a word about the title. "Apology" is not here used in the most common modern sense of "an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret", bur rather in the older sense of "a formal explanation or defense of a belief or system, especially one that is unpopular". G.H. Hardy is in no way expressing regret or admitting error for being a mathematician. In fact, he makes it clear that it is the thing in his life that he is most proud of. His purpose is to explain for non-mathematicians what a mathematician does and why it is valuable. Briefly, this is what he has to say A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas... The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. B

★★★☆☆ Love Rowell's voice, Simon's story not so much

Carry On Rainbow Rowell I recently read the collection X-Men . It contains a Foreword by Rainbow Rowell . Her written voice was so charming, so delightful, that I immediately looked for her books. I settled on Carry On because it's the first novel in a series, so that if I liked it, I would have something to carry on 😉 with. I'm sorry to say that I will not be continuing the series. Rowell describes Simon's origin as follows If you’ve read my book Fangirl , you know that Simon Snow began as a fictional character in that novel. A fictional-fictional character. Kind of an amalgam and descendant of a hundred other fictional Chosen Ones. In Fangirl , Simon is the hero of a series of children’s adventure novels written by Gemma T. Leslie—and the subject of much fanfiction written by the main character, Cath. When I finished that book, I was able to let go of Cath and her boyfriend, Levi, and their world. I felt like I was finished with their story … But I couldn’t let go

★★★★☆ Back to front

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins P Djèlí Clark Some novels appear to have been written back to front. What I mean by that is that the author began by imagining a really great climactic scene, and then tacked some chapters onto the front to introduce the characters and maneuver them into position for the climax. Now to be clear, I have (with one exception ) no evidence that any of the novels that give me this impression were written in that way. These novels are difficult to review. I don't want to say, "Stick with it. The payoff is worth it." I don't want to say that because I have been too often underwhelmed by novels I was induced to read by reviews like that. So, I am not telling you that you will find the climax of P. Djèlí Clark 's The Dead Cat Tail Assassins worth the chapters you have to read to get to it. But *I* did! Of course I can't really tell you much about that climax without spoiling it. But I will tell you that it is introduced when our hero utt

★★★★☆ What are these people?

Red Side Story Jasper Fforde When I reviewed Shades of Grey , the first novel in Jasper Fforde 's Shades of Grey series, I asked Although I referred to Eddie as a young man, it is not clear to me what the people of the Collective are. I think they are more-or-less human. ... However, in some ways they behave like automata. These are puzzles that I hope Jasper Fforde will clear up in subsequent novels in the Shades of Grey series. Now I'm patting myself on the back, because that is indeed what Red Side Story is about. Or so say I. You might think it is about other things -- a love story, a fight to survive, a battle for justice, a cycle race -- and you would not be wrong. Red Side Story contains multitudes. Shades of Grey ended in a flurry of revelations about the Collective. Eddie, Jane and Courtland Gamboge visited the abandoned town of High Saffron, where Jane revealed that all the people supposedly sent to Reboot were in fact sent here to die. Eddie and Jane vowed

★★★★☆ That was fun!

The Masquerades of Spring Ben Aaronovitch When you begin Ben Aaronovitch 's The Masquerades of Spring , you will immediately recognize the tone as Wodehouse ian. (Unless, that is, you have not read Wodehouse 's Bertie and Jeeves books or seen the TV shows based on them. If that's you, do yourself a favor and correct this oversight immediately. I particularly recommend the series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie free on Youtube .) Our narrator Augustus Berrycloth-Young is unmistakably based on Bertie Wooster. A graduate of the magic school at Casterbrook, Gussy is fond of using magic to remove policemen's helmets from policemen's heads, etc. The action takes place shortly after Gussy's arrival in New York City around 1925. (We know from Aaronovitch 's Moment 14 that Gussy traveled to New York in fall, 1925.) The story begins when he is visited by his old schoolmate and our old friend Thomas Nightingale. Nightingale has come to New York to tr

★★★★☆ A not-quite adventure tale of the seas

Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea Richard Henry Dana Jr. I read Richard Henry Dana Jr. 's Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea as a high-school student, so perhaps 1972 or thereabouts. I vaguely remember that I was looking for a quite old book I had not yet read. I can't remember why -- perhaps it was the conviction that any book still being read 130 years after its first publication must have been pretty good to survive. It was, but not quite in the way I was expecting. Two Years Before the Mast is a nonfiction account of two years Dana spent as a common sailor. That's what "Before the Mast" means: in the forecastle, not in the comparatively cushy officer quarters. Dana was a Harvard student recovering from the measles. This was his low-budget version of a convalescence trip. In its view from the forecastle, it is quite unusual. Most books of the sea, including historical fiction, tell of sea life from the point of vi

★★★★★ I am sleep-deprived, and it's all Jo Rowling's fault

The Running Grave Robert Galbraith The first thing that struck me when I began Robert Galbraith 's (AKA J.K. Rowling 's) The Running Grave was how readable it was. Usually when I begin reading a new book I am conscious of some effort. No matter how good it may be, it feels a little like work to make my way into a new novel. But not when Rowling is the author! I was drawn in immediately. And I remained engaged right through to the end. It was not literally unputdownable, but it was pretty darn close. 960 pages, and I finished it in just over two days. What's more, I got up at 4:00 this morning, unable to sleep for wanting to know what came next. As always in a Cormoran Strike book, there are two plots. The first plot (which is the plot of the series, as opposed to any particular book) is the Strike/Robin romance. At the end of The Ink Black Heart each of them had come to the realization that they were secretly in love with the other. I say "secretly", b

★★★★☆ Hwéeldi relics and burglaries

The Tale Teller Anne Hillerman The Tale Teller centers Joe Leaphorn more than any other novel since Anne Hillerman took over the Leaphorn, Chee, and Manuelito series. His recovery from the brain injury he received in Spider Woman's Daughter is proceeding apace. He is now close to fully functional, although he has difficulty speaking English. His business as a private investigator continues, and it is in that capacity that he acts in this novel. He is hired by a museum to track down an item that is apparently missing from a package of anonymous donations. It is a relic from Hwéeldi , the Long Walk of the Navajo. At the same time, Bernie and Chee investigate a series of burglaries and a murder that appears to be connected. So we see quite a lot of them, too, and they have a interesting mystery to solve. It's a good, complicated mystery, with deep roots in Navajo history and personal relationships. I enjoyed it. I had some minor issues with the story, which I will describe

Search This Blog