Mort

Imagine a clumsy boy named Mort who gets hired by a giant skeleton called Death (who talks in CAPITALS and loves kittens) to be his helper, riding a flying horse and picking up people's souls when they die. One day, Mort cheats death to save a pretty princess named Keli who was supposed to die, which makes the whole world go wonky because everyone forgets her, but Mort falls in love and has to fix the big mess with help from Death's grumpy daughter Ysabell. In the end, Mort grows up brave, marries Ysabell, and everything sorts out on their magical flat world riding on a turtle's back, with tons of silly jokes along the way!

In Terry Pratchett's 'Mort,' the fourth Discworld novel, hapless teenager Mort is plucked from his mundane farm life by Death—the skeletal, scythe-wielding anthropomorphization of mortality—who seeks an apprentice to lighten his eternal workload. Mort quickly adapts to Death's otherworldly domain, learning to ride the ghostly steed Binky, interpret lifetimers (enchanted hourglasses dictating lifespans), and collect souls with impartial efficiency, all while residing in Death's palatial, clockwork-filled mansion alongside the moody Ysabell, Death's adopted daughter, and the curmudgeonly butler Albert. The narrative escalates when Mort, during a routine soul-harvesting in the kingdom of Sto Lat, defies cosmic order by preventing the assassination of Princess Keli, whose lifetimer he impulsively saves. This act unravels reality, rendering Keli invisible to all but Mort, sparking a romance, bureaucratic chaos in the afterlife, and a climactic struggle where Mort temporarily usurps Death's role, leading to multiversal mayhem. Pratchett weaves hilarious satire on fate, duty, and human hubris with poignant reflections on mortality, culminating in Mort's maturation and a bittersweet reconfiguration of Death's household.