Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

A lot of my friends really recommended Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels to me, so I decided to give them a try a few years ago.  I started with the very first book, The Colour of Magic.   And I really couldn’t get into it.  So I left Discworld in favour of other books by other authors.  A few years later, I got a hold of a later novel, and decided to give Discworld another try.  So I reread The Colour of Magic and followed it up with its sequel, The Light Fantastic.  Still I couldn’t really get into them.  Finally, I was told to read any of the novels that come after the first two, and I was finally able to enjoy the magic that is Discworld.

There were three novels in particular that were recommended to me by three different friends.  To date, I have read two of them; I enjoyed them both quite a lot!  The first one was Reaper Man, the story of Death’s retirement.  It was a hilarious romp in the country as Death became a farmer, and the entire Discworld was in chaos because nothing could pass on into the afterlife.  I read it in about two days, being unable to put the book down!

The second book that a friend recommended to me was Wyrd Sisters, which follows the antics of witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat.  When the King of Lancre is murdered and the only heir is thrust into their hands, crown and all, the three witches try their best not to meddle in the country’s politics.  But when the new ruler makes it personal, there’s no telling what trouble these three will cause!

The first two books that I mentioned, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, follow the wizard Rincewind as he leads the Discworld’s very first tourist, Twoflower, on a wild and crazy adventure.  These are definitely not the books to start with, but fans of the Discworld series will still enjoy reading them.

The final book that a friend recommended to me is Guards! Guards! It follows the city guards from the Discworld’s largest city on an adventure.  (I’ll admit, I don’t know the exact details of what it’s about beyond that).  I’m looking forward to reading it soon.

As you may have gathered from my descriptions, there are several different plot lines running through the series following very different characters.  This makes it easy to pick up pretty much any of the books without being bogged down by details from past novels.  That being said, I found a recommendation on Wikipedia to read the novels within the same story lines in order. You can find a list of all the Discworld novels here.

Of the Discworld novels I have mentioned in this post, the library currently has four of them.  The library does not have a copy of Reaper Man, as well as a few other titles, but I have put in a request for all of the missing titles in the series.