Mort

Mort 

by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book (#4 in the Discworld series) introduces us to Death and to his apprentice, Mort. It is typical of Pratchett's novels in that it is a tale of adventure with a hero who really doesn't know what he's doing and makes it up as he goes along (this works out some, but not all, of the time) and includes a lot of commentary on the absurdity of human life. The theme of this particular book seems to be "There is no justice, there is just us." Mort struggles through the book, especially at the beginning, with figuring out which is right or wrong in the situations Death deals with. The guidance he gets from Death about this gives the story a bit of a philisophical quality.

I am in the midst of reading another book about the peace negotiations in Paris in 1919 which is probably why this bit about history jumped out at me:

"Mort thought that history was thrashing around like a steel hawser with the tension off, twanging backwards and forwards across reality in great destructive sweeps. History isn't like that. 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." (p. 135)

This book counts toward the Turtle Recall 2021 Challenge.