For those familiar with Discworld, Mort is everything the series does well - it's fun, fast-paced, the characters are like old friends. For those unfamiliar with Discworld, Discworld is all those things. Do yourself a favour and check out the incisive satire of Terry Pratchett.

Mort is the first of the Death books - the story follows Death and his apprentice as various shenanigans ensue. I find these a lot more philosophical than some of the other Discworld books - there's lots in here about the weight of duty and the joy and beauty of being alive.

I read this to get out of a reading slump and... I think it's worked! I had such a fun time revisiting the Disc. Might have to continue a full reread of Discworld!

Dracula is a classic for a reason. At it's best the atmosphere is so highly charged that you can feel it in the environment you're in, the characters are compelling, and the plot feels so believable. The epistolary storytelling really lends itself to the story, and you really feel this sense of dread creeping in as things get worse.

I really really loved this book up until about the halfway mark - when the Good Van Helsing arrives. I found his POV really shifted the tone of the book away from this glorious atmospheric Gothic horror to... "The Right Religion Will Cure All My Problems", and took sooo much away from the rest of the book. I think I much prefer stories where characters overcome challenges to solve problems, where they figure things out - and Van Helsing... isn't that. He's a polymath who just kind of knows what to do, and I think it detracts from the narrative. I also read it as an audiobook - so it felt a bit like a religious Dutch man giving me a lecture.

There's so many more gay/feminist undertones in the other POVs than I expected, which I enjoyed - I'm sure many essays have been written about the relationships between gender and power and sexuality in the context of Dracula, and I'm not planning to explore that here, but I enjoyed it.

Overall, I had a much better time with this than I was expecting to, and I think I'd have enjoyed it more as a physical book rather than a cast audiobook. It's probably not one I'd revisit soon, but one I'm glad to have read.