Mort

I wish I lived on Discworld. There I've said it. There more of Terry Pratchett's novels I read, the more I love them.

Death comes to all men. In the case of Terry Pratchett's fourth "Discworld" Mort, this platitude has a much more literal meaning. At least for the main character Mortimer. Death wants Mort as his apprentice. In his novel Mort the reader gets to know more about "Death", the not-so-living, not-so-breathing entity responsible for the collection of souls on disc world. Not every soul gets Death's personal attention, but some do. Death is exactly what one thinks of as traditional death, seven foot skeleton in a black robe with glowing blue pupils.

With Mort in charge of the day to day running of the operations, problems are sure to follow. Think Disney's "The Magicians Apprentice" but with dead people instead of mops.

Death is one of my favorite characters in Discworld, followed closely by the wizards of the Unseen University. One of the absolute joys of the Discworld Series is that they can be read in any order. Mort(Discworld 4) is considered the first "Death" novel from his "Discworld" series followed by Reaper Man (Discworld 11), Soul Music (Discworld 16), Hogfather (Discworld 20), and Thief of Time(Discworld 26), although death shows up in almost every novel as a minor character. These novels are directly about Death who has a rich story all his own.

In every novel there are at least one or two exceptionally snarky comment that Mr. Pratchett drops into his story that just makes my day. In Mort it was the comment a married man made while thinking about his wife "with whom he had enjoyed six happy months of married life. That had been some twenty years previously."

As for this novel specifically, I just loved watching Death trying to figure out the living and what makes living so great. Drunken Death was a hoot! As is true in several of Mr. Pratchett's novels, there is something both hilarious but ultimately sad about Death. He tries to understand the living, he even has an adopted daughter he "picked up" after he collected her parents souls.

I wish, oh I wish I had come across Terry Pratchett sooner. It pains me to know that he is suffering from Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a variant of Alzheimer. But I get a small measure of joy knowing that at this time he is still able to create new works and that the world he created will live long past his physical existence and future generations will be able to enjoy his works.

I am looking forward to reading the rest of the "Death" novels, and immersing myself more into the fabulous Discworld!