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Terry Pratchett

Mort (Discworld Hardback Library) Unknown Binding – November 1, 2013

by Terry Pratchett (Author)

4,566 ratings

Book 4 of 41: Discworld

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Deaths apprentice Mort thwarts Deaths attempt to finish off the rather attractive Princess Keli He kills the assassin and undermines Death so much so that he starts drinking gambling and having fun

Language

English
Publisher

Gollancz
Publication date

November 1, 2013
Dimensions

5.2 x 1.02 x 7.87 inches
ISBN-10

1473200105
ISBN-13

978-1473200104
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gollancz (November 1, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1473200105
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1473200104
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 1.02 x 7.87 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #157,051 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,162 in Epic Fantasy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4,566 ratings

About the author

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Terry Pratchett

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Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was fifteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe. Terry worked for many years as a journalist and press officer, writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including his first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. In 1987 he turned to writing full time, and has not looked back since. To date there are a total of 36 books in the Discworld series, of which four (so far) are written for children. The first of these children's books, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal. A non-Discworld book, Good Omens, his 1990 collaboration with Neil Gaiman, has been a longtime bestseller, and was reissued in hardcover by William Morrow in early 2006 (it is also available as a mass market paperback (Harper Torch, 2006) and trade paperback (Harper Paperbacks, 2006). Terry's latest book, Nation, a non-Discworld standalone YA novel was published in October of 2008 and was an instant New York Times and London Times bestseller. Regarded as one of the most significant contemporary English-language satirists, Pratchett has won numerous literary awards, was named an Officer of the British Empire “for services to literature” in 1998, and has received four honorary doctorates from the Universities of Warwick, Portsmouth, Bath, and Bristol. His acclaimed novels have sold more than 55 million copies (give or take a few million) and have been translated into 36 languages. Terry Pratchett lived in England with his family, and spent too much time at his word processor. Some of Terry's accolades include: The Carnegie Medal, Locus Awards, the Mythopoetic Award, ALA Notable Books for Children, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Book Sense 76 Pick, Prometheus Award and the British Fantasy Award.

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5 star		74%
4 star		20%
3 star		6%
2 star		1%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Impossible to review

Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2019

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It’s impossible to do justice to reviewing a classic. The Death series and character is my favourite in Pratchett’s disc world, maybe followed by the wizards. Who knew the grim-reaper’s story could be so sweet?

Somehow Pratchett draws almost every character, however fearsome, as a public servant, just trying (not overly hard) to get by. Only the women are powerful and determined in these books, even when inclined to frills.

You just can’t beat the scene of Death interviewing for a job, seeking something with cats and flowers.

The use of capitals as Death’s voice is hilarious and so clever, adding a third dimension to two-dimensional words on a page. I wish Pratchett had lived to turn the world of texting and tweets on its head in the same way as he did with these books.

Pratchett builds relationships between the characters with the barest line or two, almost incidentally or outside the narrative, yet with complete conviction.

The poetic rambling writing, while seemingly leading to nowhere, other than to footnotes, builds an incredible story and powerful characters. In Pratchett’s beautifully unassuming way, this book is, simply, masterful.

In this, Pratchett’s cynical witty honest world, where “there is no justice, only ME” (Death), where there is no way Mort can win, Death delivers the most unexpectedly just end. With hardly any death. Poetic justice at its finest.

Only Pratchett could write about death and eternity in this way. It’s bittersweet reading this when Pratchett has passed. Few people leave behind this kind of creative, enjoyable, thought-provoking legacy.

That’s the best inadequate review I can give.

26 people found this helpful

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Amusing Story with Death, Humanity and Magic

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2017

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Terry Pratchett was brilliant and the master of a fantasy sub-genre that probably belongs to him alone. Mort is a novel set in Discworld. The Discworld novels fall into different categories: Tiffany Aching, Rincewind, the three witches, Sam Vines and the guards, and Death. Each book focuses on one of them, although they cross over and pop up in each others' books all the time. It is best if you start from the beginning of a particular grouping and work your way through, otherwise you'll miss a lot of inside jokes, references, etc. There are charts on the internet that will show you the groupings. You can trust Terry Pratchett to not be too linear and to not be very predictable. Mort is an early novel of Death. Mort is a bumbling young adolescent of no particular talent when his father takes him to the job fair to find an apprenticeship. Just at the stroke of midnight, Death arrives to offer Mort the apprenticeship. Death lives with his man servant, his daughter, and Binky, an immensely powerful horse, at a compound of his own creation. Like all of the Discworld books, the tone is satirical and clever. This book did not make me laugh out loud like Wee Free Men, but it was amusing. Ankh Mopork is much the same (a city impossible to describe here). Mort is sincere but naïve. Death is suffering from burnout and mayhem ensues. Somehow, Terry Pratchett makes all the nonsense work. These books do not contain any scenes, language, or images that would rate even a PG-13 rating at the movies. If a reader does not have sufficient maturity, much of the book will be wasted, because you won’t get the jokes or understand the satire. I count myself lucky to still have so many novels of Discworld ahead of me.

24 people found this helpful

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Tara

Kindle version FULL OF ISSUES

Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2019

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I never write reviews, but the typos and errors in this e-book drove me crazy. There were numerous places where dialog had an open quotation mark and no closed mark, some lines were repeated at the end of paragraphs, and the footnotes did not appear at all in-line so I didn't see them until I got to the end of the book (out of context). I could have lived with the quotation mark/capitalization issues, but there are numerous places in the book where Pratchett is trying to show how two of the characters are changing, and he uses a different dialog formatting to demonstrate this, sometimes mid-sentence. This is super confusing with all these weird formatting issues. There were places where I think lines of dialog had line breaks in the middle but no closing quotation marks, so I wasn't positive if the next line was dialog or not. And it was all over, not just in parts. I opened other books on my Kindle, thinking maybe there was some glitch in the device, but the other books do not appear to have any errors.

On top of all of that. On top of it. The Kindle thinks the beginning of the dang book is 55% in. I didn't notice this and was confused about what was going on, but trusted Pratchett and rolled with it for a while, assuming things weren't being explained for a reason, until I went to see if these typos were actually intentional by comparing it to the free sample, and thereby discovered... I had read the middle of the book first. Again, I checked my other books--I own over 100, and while I did not check them all, I do read about a book a week so I think I would notice--and this appears to be the only one on my device that has glitches, so I have to assume it's a problem with the Kindle version.

If you're debating the Kindle version or buying the paperback, then go paperback!!!!

14 people found this helpful

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Jerry Hyson

Great Book, Kindle Missing Footnotes

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2019

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I love the entire series of Discworld books, but I think this might be where Pratchett really hits his stride. Death is such an interesting character in the Discworld so it’s only logical to give him his own story arch. It only makes sense that Death would only speak in CAPITAL letters. This book made me realize why Death is so fond of cats, they do have nine lives after all. My one complaint is that the current Kindle edition (and several others in the series) have the asterisk for the footnotes, but no link. Pratchett’s asides are not important to the plot, but definitely show his humor.

9 people found this helpful

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V. O'Regan

Delightful comic fantasy featuring Pratchett’s iconic Death

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2022

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‘Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job. ….‘

Terry Pratchett’s ‘Mort’ was originally published in 1987. It is Book 4 of The Discworld series and Book 1 of the Death series. I had originally read its paperback edition in 1988 though have long wanted to reread. I complemented my reading with its unabridged audiobook narrated by Nigel Planer.

After failing to be chosen at an apprentice fayre, Mort and his father are stopped on the road by a black-cloaked skeleton. Death, the Grim Reaper of the Discworld, offers Mort an apprenticeship. He accepts as there’s job security, free board, use of the company horse, and best of all being dead isn’t compulsory.

Mort slowly adapts to his new responsibilities yet on his first solo mission gets himself into a spot of bother. He has to correct the situation before the boss finds out and receives unexpected assistance from Death’s daughter, Ysabell.

Death is one of my favourite Discworld characters and this novel was just so much fun. I was frequently in tears of laughter. The banter between teenagers Mort and Ysabell was especially amusing.

The Discworld always delights and Terry Pratchett was so skilled in sending up various fantasy tropes alongside social satire. I plan to reread others in the series in the near future.

On a side note, I was pleased to see that the publishers have retained Josh Kirby’s iconic cover art.

Highly recommended.

3 people found this helpful

Stephen Clynes

A lightweight tale that lacks depth.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 30, 2018

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Mort is a young lad who gets a job as an apprentice for Death on Discworld. This is the story of how he gets on as he learns his craft.

I have NEVER read a Terry Pratchett novel before and was curious to find out why he had become a top selling author. Fantasy novels are NOT my regular reading genre but like Real Ales, I like to try different ones to see if I like them.

There are 40 novels in the Discworld series, they do NOT have to be read in sequence and are all stand-alones. Why did I chose Discworld #4 as my first book? Unashamedly, it was on special offer for just 99p and the price was right!

Mort was written in 1987, so I wondered what a book written over 30 years ago has to offer. Well, Discworld is a fantasy planet, so very different from Earth. Discworld is flat and rides on the back of four giant elephants who stand on the shell of the enormous star turtle Great A’Tuin, and which is bounded by a waterfall that cascades endlessly into space.

Mort is a fantasy tale involving wizards, magic and spells. There are 5 central characters in this tale, the main being Mort, a young lad moving into the world of work. Death is his boss and the tone of his speech is one of authority and appears “IN CAPITALS”. His daughter also has a role to play, so has a princess and a wizard. There is one animal taking a vital role, it is a horse. This is not any old horse but a special horse that belongs to Death which can fly into the air to travel extensive distances across Discland at great speed. This horse has great power and is very strong because later in the story Mort, Death’s daughter, the princess and the wizard climb onto its back and fly away! Oh yeah, whatever, this is a fantasy.

No time period is mentioned but the feel is of the dark middle ages. There is no mention of technology or modern infrastructures, far far away from our modern obsession with social media, smartphones, cars and CCTV. Yet the dialogue and attitudes between characters is relatively contemporary. For example…

The piercing blue eyes glittered at him. He looked back like a nocturnal rabbit trying to outstare the headlights of a sixteen-wheeled artic whose driver is a twelve-hour caffeine freak outrunning the tachometers of hell.

… Terry Pratchett uses an extensive vocabulary in this novel, it is NOT a children’s book and he uses some obscure and very old words. For a fantasy novel, this range of vocabulary makes for an intelligent and articulate adult read.

Terry creates his scenes with great skill and has a talent for great storytelling. For example…

Ankh- Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.

….There are odds bits of dry humour scattered through this book, for example…

‘It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,’ he said. ‘Have you thought of going into teaching?’

…So Terry wrote this novel and how did I rate it as a reading experience?

Ah, I thought a change from my usual genres of reading would be a refreshing and delightful change. I found Terry’s writing talent was GOOD but this story LACKED DEPTH. I think Mort is a lightweight tale, which if it was on TV, people would have one eye on the screen and talk over the whole programme. I did not get much out of reading this book. I found the entertainment value was POOR and just continued reading to the very end because that is the type of guy I am. For such a top selling and popular author I was disappointed. I think that Mort is a POOR read and only gets 2 stars from me. I am glad I only paid 99p for this book and that I now know what pleases some people.

10 people found this helpful

Fonz

Death's Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 22, 2021

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Brilliant Discworld book, it's about my favorite Pratchett character Death. You explore Death's struggle to explore if he is suited to a life of doing something else apart from being the Grim Reaper, He shows that he's always looking for the meaning of being human as he longs to understand the meaning of being alive, He takes on an Apprentice called Mort (Spanish for Death) so he can explore humanity and things go understandably wrong, hilarious.

3 people found this helpful

Simon Binning

Good fun; well paced, interesting characters, and some genuine laughs

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 6, 2015

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According to many, this is the book where the author really got into his stride with his Discworld novels, and that the first three were appetisers. I'm not sure about that. It certainly runs on well from the earlier books, and as usual, you can easily read it as a standalone, although having read the previous volumes, you have a bit of a headstart concerning Discworld, and some of its places and inhabitants. The main characters in this episode are Death - who we have met in previous stories - and Mort, to whom Death offers an apprenticeship. I won't go into the story, as it would spoil it for you, but it is well written, well paced, and had - for me - a few geniune 'laugh out loud' moments.
I have enjoyed all four books I have now read in the series, and although this one is perhaps a little better plotted and paced, I would urge you to read them in order, as they make more sense that way. There are some great characters - Death is a wonderful creation - and many events do actually make you stop and think. Certainly Discworld is imaginary, but imagined worlds always allow authors to reflect on our own, real world.

20 people found this helpful

Tom

One of the best in series.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 17, 2018

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Meeting DEATH would be, at the very least, a bewildering prospect to most people, but in the story of Mort, we find he's a very likable character.

I've read most of the series, but found some of the books lacked a certain spark. Mort is the book I keep coming back to repeatedly, however. It's a great story, told with a phenomenal amount of humor and thought.

Really treasure this book and I'm sure I'll be reading it again very soon.

5 people found this helpful

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