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Mort
Cover
Published	May 1987
Publisher	Victor Gollancz
ISBN	[1]
Pages
Series	Death Series
Main characters	Death Mort Ysabell Binky Albert Keli
Annotations	Annotations for Mort
Notes	Book #04
All data relates to the UK hardback edition.

Blurb

Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.

After being assured that being dead was not compulsory, Mort accepted. However, he soon found that romantic longings did not mix easily with the responsibilities of being Death's apprentice ....

Characters

Main characters

• Death
• Mort
• Ysabell
• Binky
• Albert
• Keli

Minor characters

• Lezek, Mort's father
• Duke of Sto Helit
• Igneous Cutwell, a wizard
• Terpsic Mims, an angler (fisherman) saved by Death ("for later") and his wife, Gwladys (largely the reason that Terpsic is an angler)
• Lord Rodley of Quirm
• Cripple Wa, who runs a floating crap game
• Liona Keeble, Ankh-Morpork's first job broker
• Sun Emperor, boy emperor who nominally runs the Agatean Empire, though the Grand Vizier, Nine Turning Mirrors, is really in charge (until is attempt to assassinate the boy emperor backfires)
• Rincewind

Mentioned (incl very minor speaking parts)

• Hamesh, Mort's uncle
• King Olerve the Bastard, Keli's father
• Pilgarlic, leader of a group of thieves who unwisely try to rob Mort
• Ammeline Hamstring, a witch who's scheduled to die, and Granny Beedle and Gammer Nutley, her colleagues
• Abbott Lobsang, a monk (member of the Listeners) who's scheduled to die.. again
• Offler
• Mrs. Nugent
• Artorollo, once King of Ankh-Morpork

• Lesser nobles of Sto Lat:
  • Lord of the Privy Closet
  • Lady of the Small Hexagonal Room in the North Turret

• Staff of Sto Lat castle:
  • Chamberlain of Sto Lat
  • Yeoman of the Pantry
  • Moghedron, the wine butler
  • Royal Astrologer

• The Patrician

• Queen Ezeriel, a Klatchian queen who bathed in asses' milk, had many lovers, and killed herself by sitting on a snake, parodying Roundworld's Cleopatra

• Hummok M'guk
• Ug and Zog, names for several proto-humans

• Catroaster, a philosopher with a negative (albeit short-lived) opinion of Ankh-Morpork

• Blind Io and his somewhat more blind High Priest (in Sto Lat)

• Heavenly Guard, who patrol the Great Wall

• Ly Tin Wheedle (mentioned)

• King Zetesphut of Tsort (mentioned)

• Fate (mentioned)

• Destiny (mentioned)

• Sek (mentioned)

• Hoki (mentioned)

• Steikhegel, God of isolated cow byres (mentioned)

Locations

• Death's Domain
  • Death's Library
    • Stack for biographies more than 500 years old

• Ramtops
  • Octarine Grass Country
    • Sheepridge

• Ankh-Morpork
  • Curry Gardens
  • The Shades
    • Ham Alley
    • Pork Passage
    • Honey Lane
  • River Ankh (mentioned)
  • Mended Drum in Filigree Street
  • Harga's House of Ribs, owned by Harga

• Bay of Mante (mentioned)

• Klatch (mentioned)

• Klatchistan (mentioned), there's a promising war there

• Sto Lat
  • Wall Street, where Cutwell lives (until he's transferred to the castle)
  • Quene's Hed aka Duke's Head (depending on which reality you're in; presumably the King's Head before King Olerve died)
  • Sto Lat Castle
    • Throne Room

• Cori Celesti (mentioned)

• Great Nef (mentioned), Ysabell's parents died there
  • The Light Dams

• Pseudopolis (mentioned)

• Krull (mentioned)
  • The Edge (mentioned)
  • Hakrull River

• Carrick Mountains (mentioned)

• Ell-Kinte (mentioned)

• Dungeon Dimensions (mentioned)

• Agatean Empire (mentioned)
  • Bes Pelargic (mentioned)

• Tsort (mentioned)
  • River Tsort (mentioned)
  • Pyramids of Tsort (mentioned)

Things and Concepts

• reannual plants
• Hogswatch, time frame at start of book
• Granny Weatherwax's Ramrub Invigoratore and Passion's Philtre, a potion accidentally consumed by Cutwell
• Aurora Coriolis
• Shield of Passion ointment, a form of birth control
• Maidens' Longstop, a potion
• pizza
• Caroc Cards
• Ching Aling
• stardrip, a kind of drink
• scumble
• Brass Gongs of Leshp
• Book of the Magick of Alberto Malich the Mage, a book by Albert that first alerts Mort that Death's butler is more than he appears to be
• Rag Week, a time when Albert's statue is traditionally (albeit unceremoniously) defiled
• Rite of AshkEnte (when Albert says this backwards many years ago, he summons himself to Death, instead of keeping Death away from himself; he later uses it to summon Mort)
• Ankh-Morpork Chamber of Commerce/Guild of Merchants (mentioned)
• Serpent Dance, Discworld equivalent of the conga.
• Peach Corniche, a type of drink
• Drinks sampled by Death
  • Melon Brandy
  • Spring Cordial (contains wasps)
  • Old Overcoat
  • Amanita Liquor
• Klatchian migratory bog truffle: it's pale, brown, and warty, but it's food
• Monster Fun Grimoire, which contains instructions (not very good ones) on how to make fireworks
• deepwater puff eel, whose bladder and spleen may only eaten by those beloved of the gods (though it suspiciously sounds like bloat could come from this animal as well)
• Smoking Mirror of Grism

Roundworld references

• Titanic and Lusitania, two ill-fated ships
• Lord Nelson: many statues have been erected in honor of this famous British Lord
• When drinking in the Mended Drum, the opening lines of conversation between Death and the bartender are "It's a quarter to three" (Bartender), "There's no one in the place cept you and me" (Death). These are the opening lines to "One for My Baby" by Frank Sinatra.

Annotations

• "'I shall call you Boy,' she said." - a reference to Great Expectations, where Estella calls Pip the same thing.

• "'SHE IS A VERY PLEASANT GIRL]', said Death, 'BUT I THINK SHE QUITE LIKES HAVING SOMEONE OF HER OWN AGE AROUND TO TALK TO.' [...] 'AND, OF COURSE, ONE DAY ALL THIS WILL BELONG TO HER.'" - Early in the book, Death seems to want to Mort and Ysabell to fall in love (one almost wonders if that's the real job Death wanted Mort for), but he seems surprised when Ysabell actually does fall in love with Mort later in the book.

• "...the princesses were beautiful as the day is long and so noble they, they could pee through a dozen mattresses" - Albert is misremembering the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Princess and the Pea (the Discworld version is presumably similar). Ysabell later corrects this to "she feel a pea through a dozen mattresses".

• First reference to scumble (in Equal Rites, a distilled apple drink is referred to as applejack)

• "...same tone of voice people used when they said to St George, 'You killed a what?'" - reference to the famous story Saint George and the Dragon

• Mort says "the interface is moving at a slow walking pace [...] About twenty miles [away]", and Cutwell replies "it'll arrive around midnight tomorrow". There appears to be a miscalculation here. If a slow walking pace is 2mph, the interface will arrive in 10 hours. That would mean it's about 2pm when Mort and Cutwell are talking, but it's really the middle of the night. Did Cutwell factor in some sort of speed decrease? (perhaps he knows that interfaces like this slow down the smaller they get?)

• "...the only thing you get remembered for is that you smelled like yoghurt and were bitten in the..." - the species of snake that Cleopatra (though not necessarily Ezeriel) sat on was an 'asp' (so she was bitten by an asp on the ...).

• "Cripple Wa's famous floating crap game" - probably means that the game's location is not fixed ("floats"), but note the "floating crap" pun.

• "Twenty-one the hard way!" - probably 3 7's. In Roundworld craps, the "hard way" is when both dice show the same number.

• At one point, Death indicates he's had 47 drinks, a possible intentional reference to 47

• "When a man is tired of Ankh-Morpork, he is tired of ankle-deep slurry." - parodies Samuel Johnson's quote, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

• "'Alligator sandwich,' he said. 'And make it sna ...'" - this joke ("make it snappy") is repeated in Witches Abroad, where Granny Weatherwax is unable to remember it properly.

• This is one of the few non-Rincewind books in which Rincewind appears. In Equal Rites, some of the action takes place in the University Library, but Rincewind is never mentioned (he may be in the background, however?).

• "The other held a small yellow toad." - since toads are normally green, not yellow, this is possibly a reference to the "yellow sick toad"] joke.

• "Father tried that tone on me for years [...] It didn't work then, either." - one of the few indications that people can disobey Death's word.

• "...the kind of hedgehog that crashes out of the verges and flattens lorries" - possibly a reference to the Terry Gilliam Monty Python animation where this also occurs. The hedgehog in this case is called Spiny Norman, and is the major and only fear of Doug Dinsdale, the psychotic half of the evil gangster Dinsdale Twins of Kipling road, Stepney. A giant hedgehog flattening lorries was used as the twist in a beer commercial, with two reflective bystanders to utter the tag line "Now there's something you don't see very often".

• "if Mort ever compared a girl to a summer's day [...]" - reference to Shakespeare's Sonnet 18