I've been reading my way through the Discworld series in order for a while now - a book or two every now and again in between other things.
It's been an interesting ride so far. The early books are generally quite patchy - both The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic are really just parodies of existing (1980s) fantasy tropes, Equal Rites isn't hugely successful and both the subsequent Rincewind books (Sourcery and Eric) are pretty bad. But there are some early successes: Mort and Pyramids are both great, and by the time you get to Guards! Guards!, book 9 in the series, there's a sense that Pratchett's really hit his stride. It's actually fascinating to watch his confidence and ability grow throughout these early books, plus a slight wonder that his publisher allowed him the time and space to learn on the job - would any author these days be allowed to meander around the subject for as long as this?
Anyway, I've just finished Men At Arms (#15) and it is absolutely fantastic, easily the best so far and honestly just a really great novel in its own right. It's funny, yes, but it also has well-developed characters, a well-executed mystery plot, and a genuinely surprising amount to say about racism and social inequality (admittedly played out through the medium of trolls and dwarfs, but you know exactly what he's getting at). It's better than the previous couple of books - Lords and Ladies had great villains but as the second overt Shakespearean parody with the same characters felt a bit over-familiar, and Small Gods was a Big Idea that ran out of steam a bit towards the end.
This is about the point I got to when I read them originally on publication - I dropped away from the series in the early 90s so I've still got a staggering amount of books to read. He sure did churn these things out, sometimes at the rate of two or three a year.
Anyone got any favourites? I'm into Soul Music now, which appears to be my least favourite sort of Discworld novel - the "something from the real world but in the Discworld!" type of clunking parody last seen in Moving Pictures, plus the third go round for the "Death goes missing" plot - so it's clearly still going to be something of an up and down ride from here on in.
Mort is one of my favourite books ever, but the Guards books are usually really solid; Night Watch in particular is excellent, as is Thud.
Moist von Lipwig, though a late addition to the canon, has a couple of great books - Going Postal, Making Money, and (to a lesser extent) Raising Steam.
Tiffany Aching has a fantastic run, too: Wee Free Men, Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight, and The Shepherd's Crown. They're pitched more as YA books, but I really enjoyed them.
The best Death/Susan books are the aforementioned Mort, plus Reaper Man, Hogfather and Thief of Time. I think Soul Music is the only crap one he gets.
The one-off "gimmick" books - like Soul Music, Moving Pictures, Unseen Academicals - are generally the weakest of the bunch, and I've never really been a Rincewind fan (though I remember The Lost Continent being pretty good?).
EDIT: also, the Witches! Everything up to Witches Abroad is sort of patchy, but after that, I think they hit their stride a lot better. Maskerade is good, Lords and Ladies is great, Carpe Jugulum is brilliant. Tiffany mainly takes over from them after that, really.
Night Wath and Thud are my two favourites too. The books do keep on getting better as the series goes on.
I remember Monstrous Regiment being quite dull, but I want to re-read it to see if it works better than I recall.
I liked Monstrous Regiment when I read it but it did feel a bit separate from the rest of the Diskworld. It’s morals got a bit muddled at the end too.
I've never read a Pratchett book I've liked. I've tried multiple times. Multiple titles.
The fact Garwoofoo loves them should be a red flag.
Everybody likes them. Even people who don't like things that everybody likes still like them.
Ok, not quite true. I met a woman on an OU creative writing course who didn't get them but wanted to try one last time. I gave her Mort, she didn't like it, we moved on.
And my son doesn't like them because he can't tell which bits are jokes and which bits are relevent to the plot so he finds them impenetrable.
I've never read any Pratchett - but I've been told that you either like him or Robert Rankin (never both) and since I wasn't a fan of the Rankin books I've read I should probably give Discworld a shot at some point.
It's intimidating, though. It seems like there are nearly as many recommendations on where to start and what order to proceed as there are novels in the series.
It's intimidating, though. It seems like there are nearly as many recommendations on where to start and what order to proceed as there are novels in the series.
The problem here is that the books just keep getting better, but the latter books are even better if you have read the earlier books.
They build up this huge interrelated world where the Wizard who pops up for a scene in a Guards book is a character from a bunch of earlier books or where a book about building a printing press out a telegraph is a great story about industrial progress but it has far more depth if you already know the city they are changing. And then the next guards book has these characters dealing with those changes.
My advice is to read the first three Guards books (Guards Guards, Men At Arms and Feet of Clay) and if you like those read the rest of the Guards books. If you really like them though, go back to the start and read all the Discworld books in order.
There’s probably no substitute for reading them all in order, but you’ll have to accept that they start out quite patchy.
The main problem I think is that Pratchett writes in multiple styles throughout, and while you might enjoy (say) elaborate Shakespearean parodies, you may be less keen on a pun-heavy Discworld take on the movie industry. Brian’s recommendation of starting with the Guards novels is a good one, I think, as of all his books they’re the closest to traditional fantasy novels with jokes in.
Start at the beginning, go in published order. Like Gar says, they are very patchy for a while, but I can't imagine starting with Guards! Guards! and then trying to go back to earlier stuff.
Cool, now I just need to find the approximately ten thousand pounds it'll cost to acquire them.
Buy one a month and you'll never notice the cost.
Are you driving down at the weekend? I can lend you the first… however many you want. I have most of them on Kindle if I desperately want to re-read them.
My local Oxfam always has a couple tucked away in the fantasy section. £1.99.
And just to add another confusing opinion, I don't think it really matters where you start. They're written to be enjoyed on their own. Every character, even the ones that have been in 20 books, are reintroduced every time.
If you're charity shop fishing, just read the first one you find. You'll miss the odd joke, but we're not talking MCU levels of interconnectedness.
Eeesh. Interesting Times is a bit… racist.
I played the Discworld boardgame the other day. It’s out of print, but for fans of the series it’s well worth playing. Fun bit of area control and deck management, with some funny random events thrown in. Great as a three player, probably best as a four player.
New cast for The Watch announced.
https://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/bbc-announces-watch-tv-cast/
Without wanting to sound like the bores who moan about gender-swapped casting, there are some interesting decisions there. I'm sure it won't matter a jot if they get everything else right, but Dibbler isn't very… Dibblery.
Virtually every character looks hopelessly wrong. That’s a spectacularly bold “interpretation”.
I don’t mind a bit of creative licence but honestly if you don’t actually want to use the books as a basis then why even bother?
My only real problem is with Sybil; she's far too thin. I mean, it's fantasy, so by all means cast a black woman as Lady of the Manor, but gods forbid she be fat…
Everyone's so young, too. By all means make a fantasy world entirely populated by hot twenty-somethings if you want, but don't call it Discworld.
I've not read the books, so by all means disregard this if it flies in the face of your headcanon, but maybe it's not realistic to judge an actor's fitness for a fantasy role based on their agency headshot?
Yeah, seems too early to judge to me.
Er.
Keel is featured in this series. He's the person who taught Sam Vimes how to be a copper.
And the plot of the book he is featured in has him killed by Carcer and and an older time travelling Sam Vimes pretends to be him.
That would be a bit of a push with this casting.
Been a while since I read a Discworld book so I jumped back in to my on-off reading of the books in order, with Maskerade. I'm definitely into books I never read when I was younger, so at least it's new, but it's yet another elaborate parody and in this case (Phantom of the Opera) of something I know nothing about, so I feel I'm missing quite a lot.
I'm finding these hard going at the moment. The last couple I read were really very bad - Soul Music was exactly the same Death plot for the third time, and Interesting Times was unpleasantly racist - and this is no more than mildly diverting, with a lot of the same basic jokes as the previous Witches books. Is this just a difficult period for Pratchett, or is this how they are for the rest of the run?
I didn't read them in order so I don't know if they dipped in the middle, but if you stop reading now you'll miss out on some brilliant books. Including Night Watch, which frequently finds its way onto snooty "best novels ever" lists.
The Tiffany Aching books are brilliant too.
Yeah, there's a bit in the middle where it's not great. I think either Hogfather or The Fifth Elephant (whichever comes first) is the turning point. From then on he's really telling actual good unique stories rather than just daft parodies.
Actually I've just checked and the first great Discworld book is Feet of Clay, which is next!
There's a couple of filler books still to go after that but most of what you have left is excellent.
Glad to hear it. Maybe it's just because Men at Arms was so outstanding that the next couple of books seemed so flat.
Yeah, the guards books are a step above the rest. Feet of Clay follows on from Men At Arms.
Feet of Clay is really good. I can see why you like it.
I'd actually forgotten about Discworld B'hrian. I took my name from the Monty Python Spectrum Game.
Could have been worse, at least you didn’t go for Jet Set Willy.
I'm going to watch and enjoy this just to annoy all of you.
Oh, I'm still going to watch it.
The first episode, at least…
I just don't understand what the hell that aesthetic is supposed to be. I get that it's an adaptation, blah blah, but as far as the books go, Vimes is a uniform man - even when the uniform isn't something to be all that proud of.
This "middle-aged-punk-with-an-ageing-action-star-haircut-and-hobo-beard" look just doesn't seem to line up with the character; so either they're being very loose with their approach, or someone missed something.
They seem to be going for a 'Bad casting walks around Camden Market' vibe.
"…the formidable Lady Sybil Ramkin, last scion of Ankh-Morpork’s nobility, who’s trying to fix the city’s wrongs with her chaotic vigilantism."
Lady Sybil is not a skinny redhead angry vigilante. What's the point?
I’ve only just finished reading one of the Guards novels and I have absolutely no idea who those two characters in the photo are meant to be.
Vimes and Angua.
Cheery isn't even a dwarf any more, and they've just transplanted Carrot's upbringing onto her (orphaned human raised by dwarves), begging the question what they've done to him.
I'm willing to accept that it might still be a decent show, but it's not Discworld.
