Mort is the third book in the discworld series and for a long time it's been one of my favourites.
I can imagine this was a challenging book to write, in the earlier Terry Pratchett books we very occasionally met the character 'Death'. He'd be riding a white horse and 'TALKING IN CAPITALS EVERY TIME HE SPEAKS'.
He's not really fleshed out as a character until Mort, in the previous Terry Pratchett Books, he'd more of the anthropomorphic personification we expect him to be. In Mort he develops a real character.
Pratchett is fascinated with human folklore and the way people percieve things. Death as a character conversely is fascinated with humanity. It all starts at a country hiring fair, a young boy called Mort has set out to be apprenticed to someone. He appears to have failed - but at the stroke of midnight Death appears and takes in on.
This is where the roller-coaster starts, we learned that Death has a house in something of an alternate reality in 'The Light Fantastic'. We learned that he'd got an adopted daugher - Ysabell, but now her character gets more fleshed out, indeed she is one of the main characters in the book. We also get to meet Death's man servant an 'Albert' who claims to fry porridge for breakfast.
The whole book is about Death's attempts to experience humanity, often to comic effect. It's an enjoyable read and is just as engaging as the actual plot in this Terry Pratchett Book, the fact that Mort, instead of ushering a princess into the next life - takes pity on her and saves her. This causes a major upset in reality, unlike anything seen in the previous Terry Pratchett Books - the princess should be dead, her subjects feel sad but don't know why, people stop recognising her... Eventually the walls of reality close in.
As Death seeks to become more human, Mort finds himself becoming more like Death, the book climaxes with a duel between Death and Mort...
Overall this is a great book, for a long time it was my favourite out of all the Terry Pratchett Books, it's got so many levels to it - but at it's core it's about human nature.
If you've read Mort, then I suggest you read 'Reaper Man' a slightly later one of the Terry Pratchett Books - which continues this theme and takes it to a new level... Because Death retires!
