Introduction to the Discworld Series
Why I'm re-reading the Discworld books and why you should too.
I love the Discworld books. Terry Pratchett is one of the English language’s greatest satirical authors. He’s correctly labelled as fantasy’s answer to Douglas Adams. I’ve read every Discworld book except the last entry: Raising Steam. When it came out in 2013, I’d just started working as a lawyer and wasn’t reading much because I was way too stressed out all the time. When Pratchett died a year or so later, I decided not to read Raising Steam for the foreseeable future. I wanted there to always be a new Discworld story for me to read one day, when I was ready.
Well, I’m ready. Nearly. There’s just one thing I need to do to prepare myself for that final Pratchett book:
I’m going to re-read and review every Discworld book. (I’ll review other books and series too.) By the time I reach Raising Steam, I should be ready for my final Pratchett experience.
Why Discworld?
I don’t remember when I discovered the Discworld books. They were part of the cultural background of growing up in the UK in the 80s and 90s. You couldn’t help but know of them. Bookstores often devoted multiple shelves or even entire display sections to the series. The sheer quantity of books Pratchett wrote intrigued me as did the fact that they were set in the same world with lots of different protagonists. However, the covers always put me off. I know, I know. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”1 But we all do it.2 Otherwise books would have plain covers with just the name and author. The really stupid thing wasn’t that I judged the books by their cover art: it’s that I somehow looked at the incredible covers and thought they were bad! I probably considered them too childish or something, I guess. I was crazy. I didn’t fully appreciate them until they were gone. I now live in the US and I’m subjected to what can only be described as crimes against art. Just look at these three images:
If you live in the US, please don’t judge these books by their covers. If you live in the UK, judge away (as long as you have good taste).
The thing that convinced me to finally give the Discworld books a go wasn’t a recommendation from a friend. Nor was it a book review, a helpful shop assistant, or the knowledge that Pratchett was one of the UK’s best-selling authors. It was a random story in the paper about how the Discworld novels were the most shoplifted books in the country. For some reason, that weird factoid pushed me over the edge. I promptly went out to my nearest bookstore and stole bought The Color of Magic. There were already 26 Discworld books out at this point. I burned through the entire series and caught up with the new releases by around book 30.
There are 41 Discworld books if you include the young adult stories. I’m not reading the Science of Discworld books again because I didn’t enjoy them much the first time around. And I’m not covering the in-universe spin-offs like Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook and the children’s tales Where’s My Cow? and The World of Poo. If I ever have kids, you can be damn sure I’ll be reading these books as their bedtime stories.
Where Should You Start Reading the Discworld Series?
At the beginning.
Okay, I know that sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed how often Discworld fans recommend people start elsewhere.
“The witches books are excellent. Start with Equal Rites and then Wyrd Sisters.”
“I love the Night Watch novels. Guards! Guards! is great and they only get better.”
Or even “pick whatever book takes your fancy.” I appreciate that people are only trying to be helpful, but I’m not convinced the average curious reader is going to read summaries for 40 odd books just because some drunk nerd talked her ear off about them for an hour at a party.3
You don’t have to start with the first book, The Color of Magic, but you should. Not just to understand the world.4 Or because you meet lots of recurring characters. Or because it establishes the city of Ankh-Morpork. Rather, you should start with the first book because The Color of Magic is damn good. Okay, it’s not Pratchett’s best work. But it contains fantastic examples of his humor and is a fun read.
Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.
You will notice flaws and problems with the early stories. As my review of The Color of Magic points out, the first book is poorly paced in the second half. It flies through events so quickly that my kindle started smoking. But it is still very much a Pratchett book and that means it’s worth reading. And if my memory serves me correctly, so are the other 40. It’s going to be a fun ride.
Shakespeare, probably
Judging books by their covers is like masturbation. We’re told not to do it from a young age but we do anyway. Especially in bookstores.
And that kids, is how I met your mother.
TL;DR the world is a disc resting on the backs of four elephants standing on a massive turtle that floats through space.
I'd argue that Mort is an excellent entry-point in terms of humour and storytelling. It's standalone and very much in line with later works it how balances comedy and drama e.g. the scene with Death and the drowned kittens. Most of the world-building stuff in the early volumes gets quickly retconned anyway.
On an unrelated note, when I type "Chris Davis" into google I get results about a baseball player and some guy who coaches football. You only pop up in the second page with your video about that console scam. You could hide a dead body in the second page of a google search.
There's also a bunch of Chris Davis' on substack already. It would help if you had some kind of unique name or handle, that made You easier to find.