Dead man stalking (Mort - Terry Pratchett)

Name: davidbuttery

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Product:	Mort - Terry Pratchett
Date:	03/08/02 (47 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The first "real" Discworld novel, DEATH is a wonderful character

Disadvantages: Not a lot

JK Rowling has nothing on this... Terry Pratchett's seemingly endless Discworld series is forever being likened to the Hitchhiker's Guide books of the sadly missed Douglas Adams (hmmm... could one refer to it as a trilogy in twenty-something parts, I wonder?). The reason I bring this up is that in Adams' novels, Arthur Dent has the particularly human habit of stating the very, very, obvious, of which a prime example is "So this is it, we're going to die". Mort, the fourth book in the saga of the Discworld, and in quite a few ways its true starting point, turns this idea on its head somewhat, as the principal character is dead already. He's Death, you see.

Yes, that's right. Death. Skull. Black cowl. Scythe. TALKS LIKE THIS. You know - *Death*. As in the person - oh, I am sorry, *anthropomorphic personification* - that appears when someone snuffs it. Not always in person, of course - only wizards and witches have that honour (and possibly cats, though this point isn't really made entirely clear). But Death is universal (any chance of a character named "Taxes", Terry?) and as such is always on the scene of the crime, so to speak.

One thing needs to be made clear from the beginning - Death does not kill people. Well, not by this stage, anyway - he was considerably less conscientious in the earliest novels, though the continual annoyance of Rincewind might perhaps be considered a mitigating factor there. What he *does* do is the donkey work of actually ushering said souls into the next world - which particular next world is never entirely clear. In other words, Death is an artisan, not an artist - something that can be seen in his attempts at music, gardening and the like. He tries hard to work them out, but he never succeeds - because he just doesn't have the necessary imagination.

Anyhow, to return to Mort... for whatever reason (it is - here comes that phrase again - never made entirely cl
ear), Death has decided that he should take on an apprentice. So, quite naturally, he makes for the hiring fair in the small town of Sheepridge, where once a year young men come to be indentured into a trade. Death being Death, of course, he arrives at the stroke of midnight, and by then there is only one person left - a gawky, ungainly youth by the name of Mortimer, or Mort for short. ("HOW APPROPRIATE".) After a short but somewhat strained discussion, he is taken on.

So far, so good, and Mort's early days in Death's domain pass reasonably pleasantly, if you can call shovelling barrowloads of horse manure pleasant. The real problems set in when he is finally entrusted with THE DUTY itself, which is to say the real nitty-gritty of the job - actually separating souls from their erstwhile owners. He is charged with undertaking (ho, ho) the ushering off this mortal coil of three people. The first is a witch, who has to organise things herself when Mort gets overwhelmed by the pressures of the job. The second is the Abbot Lobsang, who pretty much takes care of himself - after all, he's been around this way more than fifty times before. The third, though... the third is the teenage Princess Keli, due to be assassinated by the wicked Duke of Sto Helit. (My goodness, not even a Grand Vizier. The man's getting above himself....)

And this - of course - is where things get complicated. Mort, unlike Death himself, is a human, at least for the most part, though the boundaries do begin to get just a little bit blurred as time goes on. His flesh-and-blood status means that he possesses glands, and that in turn means that he has feelings - emotions. Guess what happens when he sees the lovely young Keli in the flesh, about to have her life snuffed out by the Duke? Yep. Got it in one.

Altering the course of history is not a good idea, as any fule kno, and those who indulge generally come to a bad end. As is pointed out to Mort, H
istory is History - it has its own power, and anyone who tries to change it will soon find it pushing back against them. And it doesn't give up. What this means is that before long, History will spring back into shape and things will be as they were. Keli won't exactly have been killed - she will just never have been saved in the first place. A good time to start panicking, it would seem - and when Death fails to appear at all one day, things are getting just a bit out of control.

Mort works so well because the characters are well rounded and eminently believable. Death is in many ways a desperately sad figure, always striving to understand the world of humans, but always falling that little bit short. He is hated and feared for what he is not, rather than accepted for what he is, the only true friend of the poor and the sick - and it is that difference that means he can never truly understand the human mind. Mort himself evolves convincingly as time goes on... though to say more would give away too much of the plot. The lesser players in the drama - Ysabell, Death's daughter (adopted - how do you think he acquired her otherwise? Actually, I really don't want to know...), Albert, his manservant (mainly) and even his horse, Binky (who is flesh and blood, of course - hence the need for all that mucking out) play their parts well, and the whole fits together most satisfyingly.

As I said at the beginning, Mort can fairly be described as the launching pad for the phenomenal success of the later Discworld novels, and the emergence of a Pratchett who was no longer hidebound by straightforward parody of existing straight fantasy and SF writing. Mort is the point at which TP moved from being a very funny writer who happened to write well to being a great writer who also happened to be very funny. I feel, quite seriously, that Mort marks the moment at which Pratchett's work qualified for the description "literature", and this bo
ok is most definitely not one to miss.

Oh, and before anyone starts going on about how much better Philip Pullman is (a wonderful writer, I agree)... PP is one of TP's greatest fans, and described Pratchett's recent Carnegie Medal as long overdue. So there.

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pub. Corgi, 1988; ISBN: 0-552131-067

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