Ages since I've read one, and it got me in and laughing. I think I might prefer his earlier books, perhaps a bit less preachy.

As ever Pratchett delivers some lovely descriptions, characters and events.

I don't quite know why he frequently goes so hard for a suspenseful climax - the rules of the universe are being so constantly bent and toyed with that we all know that whatever is a threat can be overturned in a moment - this one was almost as bad as `it was all a dream', as as an afterthought death mentions having a quiet word with the gods, making, of course, a mockery of all the agonising of the previous few chapters.
But if you stick to the wonderful ideas and descriptions and leave the plot behind, this is a fun read.

While Mort is at an Apprenices' fair, where teenage boys are picked up by tradesmen to be apprenices, he is the only boy who is not chosen. However, when midnight chimes, Death comes and asks the boy to be his apprenrice...

Although Death has featured in discworld novels before, this is the first one wher he is one of the main characters and he is very much developed here.

Death decides to take a vacantion and "live" by visiting cities such as Ankh-Morpork while Mort is left to do his job of visting people when they die. However, Mort falls in love with one of his "clients" - a beautiful princess - and instead of collecting her, he saves her from ebing murdered, thus starting an increasingly-serious chain of events because he has changed the way the world was ment to be by allowing her to live.

This book was very funny and amusing and full of the usual wonderful discworld characters.

Much like every book I have read by Pratchett, I enjoyed every page and ever word of this one. The plot here on these reviews had been done to death (no pun intended), so I will be brief in that aspect. Death, one of my favorite Pratchett characters, decides to take some time off and selects an apprentice, an unlikely lad that cannot find employment anywhere else, to take over his duties. So begins the career of Mort, the chosen one.

This work is filled with the usual plethora of characters, most new, but some old favorites. Again we are reading an author who's imagination is almost limitless and humor is quirky, to say the least. Some of the ideas put forth in this work are rather mind-bending and I certainly could not say for certain that I understood all that happened, but that is a part of the charm of reading this author's books. The mixture of fantasy and reality skate along a thin line and the satire is both blatant and hidden; to the point of being down right sneaky. At times you come across paragraphs such as:

"Harga's House of Ribs down by the docks is probably not numbered among the city's leading eateries, catering as it does for the type of beefy clientele that prefers quantity and breaks up the tables if it doesn't get it. The don't go in for the fancy of exotic, but stick to conventional foods like flightless bird embryos, minced organs in intestine skins, slices of hog flesh and burnt ground grass seeds dipped in animal fats: or, as it is known in their patois, egg, soss and bacon and fried slice."

This paragraph is obvious, although I found it quite funny when I read it. You have to pay very close attention to the one liner though, which the author slips in here and there and must be read in the context of the paragraph or page they are written on. It is like finding little treasures hidden here and there. Another review used one of my favorite examples of the short, double take statements that Pratchett uses. Albert, one of the characters, mutters under his breath "s*odomy non sapiens" and Mort asks him what that means. Albert's answer is so typically Pratchett, "Buggered if I know." This is one of many, many delightful little gems.

One of the biggest draw to these books is the wonderful mixture of silly geography, science, magic and Godly whims that rule Disc World. Many of the situations make no sense at all; yet at the very same time can be perfectly logical, if looked at from a certain angle. The author is a master of this. The author is a Master Story Teller, and I feel that this is what makes the big difference and sets Pratchett apart from so many other authors in this genre. Now these books and this author may not be for everyone. I truly feel you have to have a sort of odd outlook on life to receive the full benefit of these reads. Everyone should try at least one or two of these books though, just of find where you stand in the scheme of things.

This is a good read; one of many this author has produced.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

I tossed this one back in my TBR pile after my son read it to give me an excuse to re-read. I hadn't forgotten how much I enjoyed this first Death book, and hadn't really forgotten the details either, but it was wonderfully fun revisiting it.

The basic premise, for anyone who hasn't read the Discworld books, is that Death takes an apprentice, Mort. This is where we learn of the theory behind Death's job, and his affection for kittens, as well as his curiosity about and inability to understand humans, particularly that emotion stuff.

Mort, unsurprisingly, makes a bit of a mess of things, and his attempts to fix it just make things worse. There's some interesting (and hilarious, of course--nobody missed the memo on that, right? Terry Pratchett = very, very funny unless otherwise indicated) theory about destiny and what happens when you mess with it, and also about the nature of history.

Mort's one of the earlier Discworld books, and it shows, because it's not nearly as complex as later ones, but it's got the serious bones overlaid with fantasy and humor that's common to the whole series.

It's also a very good introduction to the series, better, I think, than the first, Rincewind books. It's short, uncomplicated, and doesn't draw on knowledge or events from previous books. And did I mention it's funny? I'm incapable of reading a Pratchett book if there's anyone within shouting distance without reading lines aloud to them.

To people who have never read a Discworld novel, I always recommend they skip the first three novels (The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites)and start with Mort. Pratchett writes the Discworld novels as a series of threads with a small collection of one-off novels. The novels are not written in chronological order. He may do a sequel to one novel and then some time later do a sequel to an earlier novel.

Mort starts what I call the Death thread and my daughter calls the Susan thread, Susan (Death's Granddaughter) being her favorite character. It continues with Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather, and Thief of Time. Although the events of these novels interact with the events in his other Discworld novels, (Thief of Time, for instance sets up the events in Night Watch) it is not necessary to have read the others to enjoy these. Nor (I stress this) is it necessary, or even desirable, to read the novels in published order.

Why skip the first three published novels? In my opinion, Pratchett started out writing mediocre parody of other fantasy authors, (Fritz Leiber, Anne McCaffrey, Robert E. Howard, among others) but then, something really clicked with Mort - starting out as a parody of Death Takes a Holiday, it takes an abrupt turn and becomes something truly original and compelling -- funny, sad, silly, and truly suspenseful. The Discworld novels after Mort, with only a couple exceptions, got better and better until Pratchett reached his peak with Night Watch, a novel which transcends fantasy and becomes Literature.

If you must know what happens in the first two novels, see the movie The Colour of Magic released early 2008 on British television, which covers both books. The movie is better than the books. :-)

Mort -- Highly recommended, and the start of a journey you will enjoy immensely.