Yeanyway. This has nothing to do with Mort. Carry on!
On the Discworld, a boy is growing up, as they do. His name is Mortimer, known to most as Mort. Ungainly and still not used to his limbs, 16-year-old Mort has a father who is eager to find his son an apprenticeship (A.K.A. getting rid of him). Meanwhile, Death (yes, he of the voice like coffin lids slamming, like crypt stone, like ALL-CAPS) is looking for someone to whom he can pass on the business. It's a perfect match, obviously. And so Mort mounts the white horse of the Grim Reaper and begins his training. But after a solo mission to collect the soul of an assassinated princess goes horribly wrong (due to human feelings), the universe appears to be...unravelling. Reality is having a hard time. And, to make matters worse, Death is out discovering the pleasures of life, and hardly has time for his age-old duties--not even when they are more important than ever!
I don't know if Discworld books are exactly "lighthearted" or anything like that, but they're certainly guaranteed to make you laugh. It always begins instantly. For example, on only page 7, we have: "After five minutes, Mort came out of the tailor's wearing a loose fitting brown garment of imprecise function, which had been understandably unclaimed by a previous owner and had plenty of room for him to grow, on the assumption that he would grow into a nineteen-legged elephant." Going back even closer to the beginning, page 3 gives us a description of reannuals, plants that grow backwards in time. This means, of course, that you must be very careful about letting your effects have their causes--namely, not forgetting to plant the seeds of plants that grew the year before. The most delightful part about the Discworld's humor is that its author clearly shares in the enjoyment of the joke. You can hear him speaking the words with an amused tone, sort of glancing to the side with a half-smile to make sure that you're getting the joke, too. A particularly great example of this is in the very first Discworld book, The Color of Magic, when Rincewind ends up with a spell on him: "Garhartra’s spell had been the little-used and hard-to-master Atavarr’s Personal Gravitational Upset, the practical result of which was that until it wore off Rincewind’s body was convinced that 'down' lay at ninety degrees to that direction normally accepted as of a downward persuasion by the majority of the Disc’s inhabitants. He was in fact standing on the wall."
I was certainly very excited to read the first book in the Death subseries. Death is my favorite character so far, closely followed (perhaps literally) by the Luggage. Death does not disappoint in this first book about him and his associates. While his constant presence makes it hard to have funnily surprising moments involving him, like the time he shows up in I believe The Light Fantastic, holding a kebab and complaining that he's been dragged away from a party, there's still plenty of chances for the irony that has characterized his appearances since the beginning. That the character of Death becomes a dynamic character is in itself perfectly counterintuitive. Death is final, inevitable, and unmoving; he's not supposed to go away or change. Sir Terry has done a wonderful job of contrasting traditional images of Death with this restless individual who wants to try fishing and dancing, therefore increasing the potential for amusement. And it is, of course, very amusing. What makes it even better is that, even though Death wants to check out mortal activities, he can still exert an almost external power over his mind and--well, it's not exactly a body, so...corporeal form?--which leads to more weird clashes. When dancing and trying to understand the concept of fun, he says, "WE ARE HAVING FUN. HE IS HAVING FUN. THIS IS SOME FUN. WHAT FUN" (170). When exploring many different drinks at a bar, the bartender begins expressing some concern for his client who, though racking up a nicely large bill, must surely be in a dire situation. "'How many drinks have you had?' FORTY-SEVEN" (182). And, when Death decides to actually try being drunk--well, considering that it's a very sudden and delightful laugh, I will not write it here.
Yes, the Death of the Discworld is really just worth everything.
But, most of the time, we're in Mort's head, with frequent forays to Death and the wizard Igneous Cutwell. Mort's head is a good head to be in, even though it does sometimes get crowded with his inner self wondering about wizards' private lives and such ("They're not supposed to youknow... [Mort] [...] It's supposed to be bad for the magic [Mort] Funny place to keep magic [his inner self]" (154)). I think that Sir Terry had a good deal more fun with Rincewind's head, but Mort is plenty amusing. (Speaking of Rincewind, there's a nice wizard-storyline-related surprise in Mort.)
Complaints? Bad things? Certainly not! Between a torn reality, a Death with an identity crisis, wizards, a hapless hero, and the usual-and-eagerly-anticipated Discworld humor, there's no room in these 295 brilliant pages for something off or missing or unpleasant.
In short, Mort is a must-read for any Discworld fan, and a fine introduction to a new reader (although parts of it would make more sense to someone who has read The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic). It's not quite as good as those two, but better than Equal Rites. I would recommend it to Discworld fans old, new, and not yet self-recognized.
P.S. I think I got really excited about hyperlinks in this review. Sorry about that. Hyperlinks are generally really exciting--for me, anyway.