"Mort" by Terry Pratchett

Plot summary: Death hires an apprentice named Mort. Mort promptly gets squeamish about the whole "killing people" thing (even though that's not actually what Death does) and messes up history.

This is the first of the "Death" subseries of books (Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather, and Thief of Time), of which I have now read all five (Soul Music review coming eventually). I think it's my favorite of the subseries.

Mort sets up events in several later books via |Mort's eventual marriage to Death's adopted daughter Ysabel|, producing Susan (who first shows up in Soul Music, and who I first encountered in Hogfather).

There's a running joke in Discworld that the river Ankh (half of the source for the name of Ankh-Morpork) is more of a brown gelatinous mass than an actual river. It doesn't play into any of the books very much, it's just the occasional footnote or random aside.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for crude humor and swearing. Mort could be a decent videogame, except for the fact that most of the plot is kicked off by Mort |refusing to do his job and accept that that means he has to ignore people dying for no good reason|. That would make doing it as a game rather more difficult.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    "I mean, is it my money or my life?" said Mort. "That's the sort of thing robbers are supposed to demand. Your money or your life. I read that in a book once," he added.

    "Possibly, possibly," conceded the robber. He felt he was losing the initiative, but rallied magnificently. "On the other hand, it could be your money and your life. Pulling off the double, you might say." The man looked sideways at his colleagues, who sniggered on cue.

    "In that case--" said Mort, and hefted the bag in one hand preparatory to chucking it as far out into the Ankh as he could, even though there was a reasonable chance it would bounce.

    "Hey, what are you doing," said the robber. He started to run forward, but was halted when Mort gave the bag a threatening jerk.

    "Well," said Mort, "I look at it like this. If you're going to kill me anyway, I might as well get rid of the money. It's entirely up to you." To illustrate his point he took one coin out of the bag and flicked it out across the water, which accepted it with an unfortunate sucking noise. The thieves shuddered.

    The leading thief looked at the bag. He looked at his knife. He looked at Mort's face. He looked at his colleagues.

    "Excuse me," he said, and they went into a huddle.

    Page 62.

 

Appearances of Death count: 14.

(Endnote: Whoever wrote the back cover blurb for this needed to do a better job. I have a sneaking suspicion it wasn't Pratchett.)