Mort by Sir Terry Pratchett.
Title: Mort.
Author: Sir Terry Pratchett.
Genre: Fiction, literature, fantasy, humour, romance, satire, death.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: November 12, 1987.
Summary: When inept but well-intentioned Mort gets only one offer for an apprenticeship - with Death - he can’t exactly turn it down. But Mort finds that being Death’s right-hand man isn’t as bad as it seems, until he falls back to his old, bumbling ways and screws up the the order of the universe, while realizing his new job is not so helpful where romance is concerned.
My rating: 8/10.
My review:
♥ In short, Mort was one of those people who are more dangerous than a bag full of rattlesnakes. He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe.
♥ “Is it magic?” said Mort.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? said Death. AM I REALLY HERE, BOY?
“Yes,” said Mort slowly. “I… I've watched people. They look at you but they don't see you, I think. You do something to their minds.”
Death shook his head.
THEY DO IT ALL THEMSELVES, he said. THERE'S NO MAGIC. PEOPLE CAN'T SEE ME, THEY SIMPLY WON'T ALLOW THEMSELVES TO DO IT. UNTIL IT'S TIME, OF COURSE. WIZARDS CAN SEE ME, AND CATS. BUT YOUR AVERAGE HUMAN… NO, NEVER. He blew a smoke ring at the sky, and added, STRANGE BUT TRUE.
♥ In a landscape that owed nothing to time and space, which appeared on no map, which existed only in those far reaches of the multiplexed cosmos known to the few astrophysicists who have taken really bad acid, Mort spent the afternoon helping Albert plant out broccoli.
♥ Albert grunted. “Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?”
Mort thought for a moment.
“No,” he said eventually, “what?”
There was silence.
Then Albert straightened up and said, “Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right.”
♥ There should have been a flash or rush of stars. The air should have spiralled and turned into speeding sparks such as normally happens in the common, everyday trans-dimensional hyper-jumps. But this was Death, who has mastered the art of going everywhere without ostentation and could slide between dimensions as easily as he could slip through a locked door, and they moved at an easy gallop through cloud canyons, past great billowing mountains of cumulus, until the wisps parted in front of them and the Disc lay below, basking in sunlight.
THAT'S BECAUSE TIME IS ADJUSTABLE, said Death, when Mort pointed this out. IT'S NOT REALLY IMPORTANT.
“I always thought it was.”
PEOPLE THINK IT'S IMPORTANT ONLY BECAUSE THEY INVENTED IT, said Death somberly.
♥ “Won't people notice there's a horse up here?” he said, as they strolled to a stairwell.
Death shook his head.
WOULD YOU BELIEVE THERE COULD BE A HORSE AT THE TOP OF THIS TOWER? he said.
“No. You couldn't get one up these stairs,” said Mort.
WELL, THEN?
“Oh. I see. People don't want to see what can't possibly exist.”
WELL DONE.
♥ THAT'S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY'VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.
♥ A fault smile hovered around the man's lips. It was the sort of smile that lies on sandbanks waiting for incautious swimmers.
♥ It was also extremely boring. As the light distilled from silver to gold Mort galloped across a flat, chilly landscape, chequered with cabbage fields from edge to edge. There are many things to be said about cabbages. One may talk at length about their high vitamin content, their vital iron contribution, the valuable roughage and commendable food value. In the mass, however, they lack a certain something; despite their claim to immense nutritional and moral superiority over, say, daffodils, they have never been a sight to inspire the poet's muse. Unless he was hungry, of course. It was only twenty miles to Sto Lat, but in terms of meaningless human experience it seemed like two thousand.
♥ He'd learned in recent days, though, that rather than drown in uncertainty it was best to surf right over the top of it.
♥ 'Nobody likes a smartass,' she said with some satisfaction. 'We give him trouble, you see. Priests don't, so he likes priests.'
'He's never said,' said Mort.
'Ah. They're always telling folk how much better it's going to be when they're dead. We tell them it could be pretty good right here if only they'd put their minds to it.'
Mort hesitated. He wanted to say: you're wrong, he's not like that at all, he doesn't care if people are good or bad so long as they're punctual. And kind to cats, he added.
But he thought better of it. It occurred to him that people needed to believe things.
♥ It was a sorry fact that ships which looked from a distance as though they were going over the edge of the world weren't in fact disappearing over the horizon, they were in fact dropping over the edge of the world.
♥ He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.
♥ Mort was already aware that love made you feel hot and cold and cruel and weak, but he hadn't realized that it could make you stupid.
♥ History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always - eventually - manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.
♥ As one man, the assembled company stopped talking and stared at him with the honest rural stare that suggests that for two pins they'll hit you around the head with a shovel and bury your body under a compost heap at full moon.
♥ The difference is that Cutwell is, by training, a better guesser than other people and knows that in occult matters the obvious answer is usually the wrong one.
♥ Some people like to settle down with a good book. No one in possession of a complete set of marbles would like to settle down with a book of magic, because even the individual words have a private and vindictive life of their own and reading them, in short, is a kind of mental Indian wrestling. Many a young wizard has tried to read a grimoire that is too strong for him, and people who've heard the screams have found only his pointy shoes with the classic wisp of smoke coming out of them and a book which is, perhaps, just a little fatter. Things can happen to browsers in magical libraries that make having your face pulled off by tentacled monstrosities from the Dungeon Dimensions seem a mere light massage by comparison.
♥ Death began to feel that he wouldn't understand people as long as he lived.
♥ It struck Mort with sudden, terrible poignancy that Death must be the loneliest creature in the universe. In the great party of Creation, he was always in the kitchen.
♥ Funny thing about eyebrows, he mused. You never really noticed them until they'd gone.
♥ It will shortly become apparent that another reason for its growing friskiness is the fact that, in the pre-ceremony confusion, its trunk found the ceremonial chalice containing a gallon of strong wine and drained the lot. Strange hot ideas are beginning to bubble in front of its crusted eyes, of uprooted baobabs, mating fights with other bulls, glorious stampedes through native villages and other half-remembered pleasures. Soon it will start to see pink people.
♥ Light on the Discworld isn't like light elsewhere. It's grown up a bit, it's been around, it doesn't feel the need to rush everywhere. It knows that however fast it goes darkness always gets there first, so it takes it easy.
♥ But at least the way was clear now. When you step off a cliff, your life takes a very definite direction.
♥ Would eternity feel like a long time, or were all lives - from a personal viewpoint - entirely the same length?
♥ 'Goodbye,' Mort said, and was surprised to find a lump in his throat. 'It's such an unpleasant word, isn't it?'
QUITE SO. Death grinned because, as has so often been remarked, he didn't have much option. But possibly he meant it, this time.
I PREFER AU REVOIR, he said.