Mort by Terry PratchettMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Two things to note. First, I'm sorry Terry, I've resisted you too long. Second, if you giggle like a girl, and you are, in fact, not a girl, it can be rather uncomfortable to do so in a library full of huge hairy smelly unwashed homeless people that know where you sleep and carry pipe wrenches in leather holsters on their hips.
This book was just straight funny. Pratchett has a Wodehousian turn of phrase, and I caught both a line from Mortimer and a philosophy from Lewis, who of course published it some forty or fifty years before I oh-so-proudly formulated it for myself. Pratchett tends to get a bit dry when he grits his teeth, spits on his hands and tries to force a plot into the book, but aside from said plot, the book was just great. Complete with red-headed freckled princess, awkward clumsy kid who takes an apprenticeship with a rather lonely Death (bones optional was the selling point), Death's adopted daughter and a two thousand year old wizard; yes, this book was fun. Kudos, Little Miss Ligon.
A few snippets:
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.
(A bit later, talking to Death:)
"What are we going to do now?"
D: BUY YOU SOME NEW CLOTHES.
"These were new today—yesterday, I mean."
D: REALLY?
"Father said the shop was famous for its budget clothing," said Mort, running to keep up.
D: IT CERTAINLY ADDS A NEW TERROR TO POVERTY.
She had silver hair, and eyes with a pearly sheen to them, and the kind of interesting but impractical long dress that tends to be worn by tragic heroines who clasp single roses to their bosom while gazing soulfully at the moon.
An inner-city area sorely in need either of governmental help or, for preference, a flamethrower...It didn't have so much a neighbourhood as an ecology...
(Of a river:) Even before it entered the city it was slow and heavy with the silt of the plains, and by the time it got to The Shades even an agnostic could have walked across it.
(A wizard's front door plaque:) Igneous Cutwell, DM (Unseen), Marster of the Infinit, Illuminartus, Wyzard to Princes, Gardian of the Sacred Portalls, If Out leave Maile with Mrs. Nugent Next Door.
...the kind of person who throws all his socks at the wall and wears the ones that don't stick...
Yes, this book was fun.
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