Mort

Inhoud

Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.
After being assured that being dead was not compulsory, Mort accepted. However, he soon found that romantic longings did not mix easily with the responsibilities of being Death's apprentice...

Bespreking

Does it get any crazier?

Mort, the child of a farmer, did not really show any aspiration to follow in the footsteps of his father. His problem was not that he didn’t have the will, but more that he kept thinking too long before doing anything. Giving up all hope to ever achieve anything useful, his father sent him to a local hiring fair in the hope to land him an apprenticeship. But even that did almost turn out to be a disaster. Almost. Luckily just before the market was about to close, a rather peculiar entity showed up and addressed him in CAPITALS. To the other people this person looked like an undertaker, but Mort saw right through it... literally.

This fourth book of the popular Discworld series was elected as one of the most beloved books in the BBC's 2003 Big Read contest. And that is arguably due to the character of Dead. It’s the first of the Death series, although Death himself already appeared briefly in the previous books, and elaborates on the fantastic world of Death also known as Death’s Domain. It also introduces some strange concepts like the ‘reannual plants’, plants you have to sow one year after you harvest them. It’s these kind of crazy idea’s that make Mort such a wonderful gem of a book. Nevertheless, the actual story tends to get pushed a bit to the background, which sometimes leads to a quite difficult to comprehend story arc. Luckily the denouement gets first price in shedding some light on this chaotic story. At least that is what I thought... or maybe it was not and I got completely transcendental too. Who’s talking there in capitals?