Mort (Discworld 4)
Sep. 16th, 2021 10:53 pmIn which Death takes an apprentice.
This book. This book. This is, I think, the beginning of what people who rave about Discworld are raving about. At about the halfway point I described it as "a delight," and it was, and it remained so.
The titular Mort starts out as a pure comic character. Ha, he's tripping over himself; ha, he can't do anything right; ha, he thinks too much; ha, no one wants him to work for them. Even Death's choice of him as an apprentice is less "I see the potential in you" and more, well, a joke on Death himself: ha, he showed up at midnight to try and get an apprentice, of course there's only the useless one left.
The thing is, though... Mort is fun. He's a little goofy and a lot out of his depth, but after his intro he's rarely the target of humour. He just wants people to remember his name and treat him like a person. And even when the other characters don't, the narrative always does.
And thus the Plot unfolds, as a direct result of Mort's character and Death's abysmal mentorship. Mort catches a glimpse of a princess, falls in love with her, and, when he's assigned to oversee her death, saves her life instead. Much of the book is taken up with the ramifications of Interfering With Predestination (Pratchett doesn't call it that, but that's what it is).
The actual plot may be the weakest part of the book. It's interesting and compelling but it ended up looking to me like a string of barely-connected incidents that all happened to come together well. Admittedly a lot of why they come together has to do with a) characters and character traits b) that were seeded well in advance of where they needed to happen. So maybe I'm just annoyed that much of it was foreseeable and I was looking in the wrong places. Overly concerned with the reality-bubble closing in around the ought-to-be-dead princess Keli, not paying enough attention to Mort and to the feel of the Death Takes A Holiday scenes. Definitely wanting to reread this one at some point
It read to me like it was about, well. Loneliness, and getting stuck in a situation you don't want to be in and can't figure out how to get out of, and just wanting people to see you for once. Themes that are close to my heart. I do wonder if someone else might have a different experience of it.
This book. This book. This is, I think, the beginning of what people who rave about Discworld are raving about. At about the halfway point I described it as "a delight," and it was, and it remained so.
The titular Mort starts out as a pure comic character. Ha, he's tripping over himself; ha, he can't do anything right; ha, he thinks too much; ha, no one wants him to work for them. Even Death's choice of him as an apprentice is less "I see the potential in you" and more, well, a joke on Death himself: ha, he showed up at midnight to try and get an apprentice, of course there's only the useless one left.
The thing is, though... Mort is fun. He's a little goofy and a lot out of his depth, but after his intro he's rarely the target of humour. He just wants people to remember his name and treat him like a person. And even when the other characters don't, the narrative always does.
And thus the Plot unfolds, as a direct result of Mort's character and Death's abysmal mentorship. Mort catches a glimpse of a princess, falls in love with her, and, when he's assigned to oversee her death, saves her life instead. Much of the book is taken up with the ramifications of Interfering With Predestination (Pratchett doesn't call it that, but that's what it is).
The actual plot may be the weakest part of the book. It's interesting and compelling but it ended up looking to me like a string of barely-connected incidents that all happened to come together well. Admittedly a lot of why they come together has to do with a) characters and character traits b) that were seeded well in advance of where they needed to happen. So maybe I'm just annoyed that much of it was foreseeable and I was looking in the wrong places. Overly concerned with the reality-bubble closing in around the ought-to-be-dead princess Keli, not paying enough attention to Mort and to the feel of the Death Takes A Holiday scenes. Definitely wanting to reread this one at some point
It read to me like it was about, well. Loneliness, and getting stuck in a situation you don't want to be in and can't figure out how to get out of, and just wanting people to see you for once. Themes that are close to my heart. I do wonder if someone else might have a different experience of it.