Title: Mort
Author: Terry Pratchett
Publisher: Harper
Release Date: Reissue, January 29, 2013
Pages: 304
Book Source: Library

3star

New York Times bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett makes Death a central character in Mort, his fourth sojourn to Discworld, the fantasy cosmos where even the angel of darkness needs some assistance.

When inept, but well-intentioned Mort gets only one offer for an apprenticeship—with Death—he can’t exactly turn it down. But Mort finds that being Death’s right-hand man isn’t as bad as it seems—until he falls back to his old, bumbling ways.

My Review:

Mort was chosen by my book club, so it’s not a book I would have picked. Not that I don’t enjoy comedic fantasy, I just have so many other books I would rather read first.

I really tried to keep an open mind though, since I know Terry Pratchett has a large following. Unfortunately this book was just okay, nothing I can rave about.

The overall theme was Death takes a holiday, which has been done numerous times before. I didn’t feel as if this story added anything unique to the genre. I do love cats though, and so does Death, so that was a positive.

The main character, Mort, was my least favorite, and I would say a boring character. Perhaps though, Pratchett was going for that. The reason I thought that was because whenever anyone talked to Mort, they called him boy or lad. And Mort would always correct them. Even to the other characters in the book, he wasn’t worth the time to get to know his name.

There are two ways to read this book; fast and just go along with the story, or slow and really think about the word play, writing style and world events/politics that were happening during the same time the book was written.

I started reading the book fast, but when I did slow down there was some word play that was quite enjoyable. One of the characters was talking about the princess and the pea, and another character thought they meant pee.

There were a couple of moments that surprised me. One being Death’s cook and when we find out more about him. And the romance that blooms between Mort and Death’s daughter. It just sort of, BAM, happened.

The word play and surprises just aren’t enough to make me want to start reading more about Disc World. Perhaps if I talked with those who love Pratchett’s writing, I could be swayed.

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