Continuing the summer reading project, I have recently finished Mort by Terry Pratchett.

As with any Discworld book I read at this point, I must qualify my statements by noting that my impressions are inevitably coloured by the rest of the series. Mort is a book I actually read once before, way back in the murky depths of the past. This was when I first tasted Discworld, reading the short-lived Norwegian translations, and actually reading them in order. Needless to say, I recall almost nothing of it, so rereading it now, in the original English was pretty much akin to reading it for the first time.

Mort is the story of the boy with the same name, who has trouble fitting in on his father’s farm, on account of thinking too much. His father takes him to the market to apprentice him to some trade, mostly just to be rid of him. After waiting hopefully for most of the day, he finally gets a master just at the stroke of midnight: Death. As Death’s apprentice he must deal with dour butlers, haughty daughters, a world made entirely in shades of black, and also the the whole bit about making people die. Predictably, he messes up, and endangers the fabric of reality.

This is the first of the Death books, one of my favourite subseries of Discworld, but it is not one of my favourite books. It is one of the earliest of the Discworld books, and you can tell that Pratchett hasn’t quite found the footing that makes the better part of the series truly great. Don’t get me wrong, it is absolutely a good book. It has a plot which is interesting enough, sets up characters that you really get to care about in later books, and it is of course very, very funny. Pratchett could probably write a plotless epic devoid of characters, and it would still be utterly hilarious.

But however funny it might be, it feels off to me. Probably because I am so used to his later works. One thing that felt very jarring was when he suddenly referenced our world in the middle of the text, pulling me out of the story. Again, it is quite possible this wouldn’t have bothered me at all if I wasn’t used to the style of the later books, but there you are.

Notice how I said it sets up characters you get to care about later? They too seem off to me in this book, they have also not yet found the mould which will make them fantastic. Death in particular seemed to be more of a rough sketch of what will become the true character in later books. Mort himself is entirely forgettable.

This is a book that should probably be read early, while you are new to Discworld, so that the changes in style will seem gradual rather than jarring. Having read and loved the later Death books, this one actually kind of disappointed me. Coming to it with the right expectations might make all the difference.