18th June 2018

MORT (complete)

Title Mort

Arthur

Date release 12 November 1987

Type Novel

Brief Plot Overview 

This is a story about a young boy whose father does not know what to do with him. (by the way the father is really quite thick and the son is actually quite bright) An uncle suggests taking the boy to a fair and finding him work as an apprentice there. Father and son travel to Ankmorpor, a city in a very strange flat disc world, that rides on the back of four elephants, which in turn are riding a giant turtle.

The only employer to take any interest in Mort is DEATH/the grim reaper so Mort goes off to become DEATH’s apprentice. Mort is aware that there is something strange about the man in a cloak who offers him a job, but it takes a while to realise the eyes are hollow and he is actually dead.

DEATH has the stereotypical image of a tall skinny skeleton with black eye sockets and red retinas, wearing a long black hooded clock. DEATH also, strangely has an adopted daughter, but DEATH’s daughter is short and fat enough to be five other people and wears long white flowing dresses, which do nothing to improve her appearance. “She has enough puppy fat to feed two Rottweiler dogs”

There is a butler, in the household, who is probably the most fames wizard that ever lived on the disc, and he made a pact with DEATH to avoid dying so he became DEATH’s butler.

The other characters include another wizard who really needs to learn some cleaning spells, a princes who accidently gets killed before her time and now is a ghost.

For the people of her kingdom to know she exists, she has to have a royal recogniser. The royal recogniser tells people were she is and what she is doing, as ghost can only be seen by wizards and cats. A rule that applies to DEATHJ himself.

The last and really cool character is DEATH’s horse which is alive (not a ghost), white and called -dramatic pause- Binky. 

Binky rides the sky as if it were the earth and is always in the background teasing the characters.

After being hired by DEATH Mort’s first job involves collecting a witch’s soul, reincarnating a priest – the priest remarks that Mort may have bought this run off the previous guy”, as if collecting souls was like a milk run.

The last person’s soul he was supposed to collect for the first night was supposed to be that of a princes. I t turns out Mort develops a very large a crush on her, and instead of grabbing the princess’s soul he grabs the soul of the assassin who was supposed to kill the princes. This converted the princes in to a ghost and sent the assassins soul into to the afterlife instead. This brock reality and coursed a massive storm to form at the await-side of the disk this storm can only be seen by wizeds and the ded and it is heeding for the princes                  

Interesting characters

The lot . I liked them all very much, even the cats in the alley who were on their way to a feline strip club and the drunks in the townships, and the very thick villagers. – It’s all very Monty Python only much better.

I thought DEATH was interesting because if he is going to be around forever why did he bother to get an apprentice and if he doesn’t get lonely so why would he need to adopt a daughter. Most of the description of DEATH show him as uptight and evil and at the beginning he was like that but over time he softened and rearranged the fate of his daughter Mort the dorkey wizard and the princes to give them all a happy ending.

 

Challenges the characters had to overcomes

Mort had to bet the part of him that was becoming DEATH with some help from DEATH’s daughter e.g. see smack some sense into him literally. Mort also had to find a way to bet reality and save the princes.        

Messages I took from the Text 

Don’t get hired by DEATH 

Sometimes even the strictest figures well let sum things slid if they won’t    

Who I would recommend this Book For

Someone how likes to lath and how likes Monte python because the home is great but not sow  to understand.   

 

Join the conversation! 2 Comments

  1. Let’s work on completing the last parts of this – the messages you took from the text.

    Reply
  2. Achievement Achievement with Merit Achievement with Excellence
    Form developed personal responses to independently read texts, supported by evidence. Form developed, convincing personal responses to independently read texts, supported by evidence. Form developed, perceptive personal responses to independently read texts, supported by evidence.

    NOT ACHIEVED

    Reply

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