A Job That Slowly Kills You... (Mort - Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: andrewl

Product:	Mort - Terry Pratchett
Date:	06/08/09 (78 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: High-concept, frequently hilarious

Disadvantages: Slightly lame plot detour to Ankh-Morpork

Mort is the fourth novel in the Discworld series. For those that don't know, the Discworld novels concern events on a flat world carried through space on the back of four elephants. These elephants are standing on the turtle, Great A'Tuin.

The Discworld is a fantasy world, but a fantasy world ruled by surprisingly mundane laws. Conservation of energy applies to magic, for example, so wizards use their own brains as leverage when levitating objects.

Dragons don't exist on the physical plane, as they are magical creatures that couldn't possibly sustain themselves in reality (or even be able to fly). The only dragons are nervous swamp creatures which spontanaeously combust at random.

Even in this fantasy realm, Death is still present. And because this a fantasy world, he even appears as a major character, a fairly personable reaper who has sympathetic chats with those he ushers into the next world.

In Mort, Death decides to take on an apprentice, called Mortimer, or Mort, an awkward gangly teenager, as teenagers often are. Death decides to make the most of having a bit of help in the Grim Reaping business, taking the opportunity to wander off on holiday, and Mort comes close to screwing up the whole of causality.

It's always a matter for debate whether Pratchett is a humour writer, or a writer who uses humour, but it must be said first of all that this is a very funny novel. Scythe-wielding skeletons stopping off for a takeaway curry after a hard night of harvesting the mortal world is a faintly disturbing image, but Death's easy, slightly sardonic humour covers it nicely. One of my favourite lines involves Death surveying his apprentice's new 'suit' disapprovingly:

MORT: My father said they were famous for their budget clothes.
DEATH: IT CERTAINLY ADDS A NEW TERROR TO POVERTY.

The novel does pose some fairly tricky philosophical questions, however. If we accept that destiny exists as a universal force, and that there is an appointed time for everyone to die, do we then have the right to interfere in that process? When Mort prevents Princess Keli's murder, he also prevents a few hundred years of peace between two kingdoms. Countless time travel stories warn of the dangers of meddling with history, but is Mort wrong to be meddling in the present?

This question is not really answered explicitly, which is probably just as well. Mort's character certainly develops through the book, and it's an interesting question whether he would have acted similarly if faced with the same situation at the end.

So, serious issues and serious drama are masked by humour (and it is hysterical humour). Pratchett carefully includes several viewpoints through the different characters. Clearly, the old man's thoughts on death are going to be very different from those of the young princess or Mort.

The book's climax divides me. On the one hand, the final confrontation between Death and his apprentice is a show-stopping, nail-biting conclusion. On the other, Albert's trip back into the real world is a bit of a non-sequitur, an opportunity to crowbar in Pratchett's regular Unseen University characters such as Rincewind and the Librarian for a bit of a cameo. It's an odd step, particularly as this was before the university's faculty became as well-defined as it is in later novels.

But this is the smallest quibbles about one of the earliest classics of the Discworld series.

My copy of Mort cost £4.99, which really just shows how long ago I bought it. Cover price is probably about £6.99 these days, but as always you can get it much cheaper on Amazon, etc.

Summary: An earliest classic of the Discworld series.