Cover of Mort

Mort

core novel 1987 Discworld

Record

First published1987
Original language EN
Work typenovel
Canon statuscore
Reader rating4.24 (280,564 ratings, collected 2026-09-11)
Page count243
First-edition ISBN9780575041714

Synopsis

Unsuited to farming, teenager Mort is taken by his father to a hiring fair where he is unexpectedly recruited as an apprentice by Death himself. Brought into Death's own domain, Mort meets Death's elderly manservant Albert and his adopted daughter Ysabell, and begins accompanying Death on his rounds collecting the souls of the newly dead, learning that every death is fixed and cannot be changed. Sent alone to claim the soul of a princess who is fated to be assassinated, Mort instead intervenes to save her life, an act that begins to fracture the natural order and leaves the princess invisible and disbelieved by almost everyone around her.

Where it sits

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.

  • Publication order, within the series Death: position 1 of 5: next Reaper Man (1991)

Sources

← Discworld dossier · All universes

Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.