I was prompted to return to this little masterpiece by the recent publication of a quite stunning new hardback edition.
My love and enormous admiration for Terry Pratchett's YA Tiffany Aching sequence is already fully documented on this blog. (See posts from June '14 and Sept '15.) I suppose strictly speaking Mort counts as one of the adult Discworld books, but it is one that is perhaps particularly accessible by teen readers. Not only is it jammed packed with this author's trademark wit and wisdom, but here the subject matter is a youth, and a girl too for that matter, discovering what they want to do with their lives - and indeed why. It is the very stuff of YA fiction. Although younger readers may not necessarily get every last witticism (there are so many clever references and sly allusions that probably few of us do) there is still an enormous amount here to amuse and entertain them most engagingly. And if it makes us reflect thoughtfully, rather than morbidly, about the role of death in life, is that a bad thing?
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