The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett

[Fez]

It's been a while, but I think Pyramids was the first Disworld book I read. I was pretty young though, and didn't really get how the series worked or who Pratchett was. I thought every book was totally standalone, and the back cover of that seemed interesting.

I didn't really get it though. A few years later, when I was older, I read it again and thought it was okay, but not great. I had a better understanding of Discworld at this point, and had heard Small Gods was great, and standalone. So I read it second, did think it was great, and then decided to read the rest of the books in chronological order.

It used to be hard to pick a favorite, but I'd probably have said Reaper Man or Interesting Times for a while. But then I got to Night Watch and was just blown away.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Pyramids started off great, so much so I just wanted more assassin stuff rather than the pyramid stuff

[Ormond]

Very interesting review. I read Mort about six months ago. I really hadn't read much DIscworld -- just the "wtiches" story "The Sea and Little Fishes" in Legends and the Rincewind the Wizzard omnibus which contains The Colour of Magic; The Light Fantastic; Sourcery; and Eric. Somehow, though I found Mort to be just OK and liked the other Discworld I've read better. I don't know if that's because the humor in Mort was more specifically "British" in a way that this American didn't quite get, or if it was just the mood I was in when I read it. Not that I found Mort to be unenjoyable -- the next Pratchett on my "to read" shelf is Reaper Man.

[Maltaran]

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Pyramids started off great, so much so I just wanted more assassin stuff rather than the pyramid stuff

I think the only other time we actually see the inner workings of the Assassins’ Guild is the Vetinari/Downey sections in Night Watch (Vetinari failing his concealment exam because the instructor thought he hadn’t turned up is one of my favourite jokes in the whole series)

[Plessiez]

16 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Pyramids started off great, so much so I just wanted more assassin stuff rather than the pyramid stuff

Me too.  The Tom Brown's School Days pastiche went completely over my head when I first read the book, but I really liked (and still like) the assassin examination bit.

[Clueless Northman]

Small Gods is really great, and if you have some basic notions of ancient times and can see where Pratchett gets some of his references and satires, it's just glorious. Haven't noticed any major link to other books and story arcs.

Other than that indeed, I think beginning with Mort or Guards! Guards! works well.

I actually read Pyramids before Mort, and assumed it was another standalone, but when I read Mort, I noticed a few passing references to the Egypt-like land of pyramids, and of course Pyramids spends some time in Ankh-Morpork so if it's your first reading, there might be a few references that go well over your head.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Clueless Northman

[Maltaran]

4 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

Small Gods is really great, and if you have some basic notions of ancient times and can see where Pratchett gets some of his references and satires, it's just glorious. Haven't noticed any major link to other books and story arcs.

There’s the Omnian priest in Carpe Jugulum, and the minor character of Constable Visit in the later Watch books, but the only big connection to later books is Lu Tze

[LongRider]

15 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

Small Gods is really great, and if you have some basic notions of ancient times and can see where Pratchett gets some of his references and satires, it's just glorious. 

That is the first Discworld book I read and I so did not get it.  Need to reread ASAP. 

[polishgenius]

On 4/4/2021 at 2:11 PM, Clueless Northman said:

 

I actually read Pyramids before Mort, and assumed it was another standalone, but when I read Mort, I noticed a few passing references to the Egypt-like land of pyramids, and of course Pyramids spends some time in Ankh-Morpork so if it's your first reading, there might be a few references that go well over your head.

I mean in the sense of there being references and cameos from others no book in the series stands completely alone. But it's only within subseries that if you read out of order you'll miss character turns and things that really matter to understand or fully appreciate the plot.

 

 

And ultimately I think the only one that really has to be read in order is Night Watch - in other books you'll have references to previous plots you won't necessarily get, but the theme of the book is usually reference to other stories, or fairytale tropes, or real-life stuff. Reading Witches or Fifth Elephant you'll get most of what Pratchett is driving at even if it refers back to events in a previous book.
In Night Watch obviously there is quite a lot of stuff about revolution and policing but it's also a book in large part in dialogue with earlier books in the series. So many storylines and jokes are built off already knowing the City Watch cast.

Edited April 5, 2021 by polishgenius

[HexMachina]

9 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I mean in the sense of there being references and cameos from others no book in the series stands completely alone. But it's only within subseries that if you read out of order you'll miss character turns and things that really matter to understand or fully appreciate the plot.

 

 

And ultimately I think the only one that really has to be read in order is Night Watch - in other books you'll have references to previous plots you won't necessarily get, but the theme of the book is usually reference to other stories, or fairytale tropes, or real-life stuff. Reading Witches or Fifth Elephant you'll get most of what Pratchett is driving at even if it refers back to events in a previous book.
In Night Watch obviously there is quite a lot of stuff about revolution and policing but it's also a book in large part in dialogue with earlier books in the series. So many storylines and jokes are built off already knowing the City Watch cast.

Having accidentally read the Tiffany Aching books out of order (Wintersmith, Hat Full of Sky, Wee Free Men, I Shall Wear Midnight, Shepherd's Crown) I can say that the series does make sense out of order but probably wouldn't recommend it. The books each have enough exposition explaining the previous novels to give you a general idea of who's who and what's what, but it does get a little bit confusing at times.

[Werthead]

Discworld #5: Sourcery

There was an eighth son of an eighth son who became, as is right and proper, a wizard. But, in defiance of tradition, he also had seven sons. And then another one: a source of magic, a sourcerer. The Discworld hasn't seen a sourcerer in thousands of years, since the Mage Wars almost destroyed the world. Soon enough, the re-energised wizards of the Disc are engaged in all-out warfare and the Apocralypse - the teatime of the gods, the return of the frost giants and so forth - draws nigh, provided the Four Horsemen can get out of the pub in time. It falls to a wizard who can't do magic, a might barbarian warrior with three days' experience, a timeshare genie and a homicidal hairdresser to save the day.

Sourcery, the fifth Discworld novel, feels like Terry Pratchett engaging in a reaction against his previous novel, Mort. Mort was a narrow-field, focused and character-based tragicomedy, and easily the best Discworld book out of the initial quartet. It seems like Pratchett may have reacted a little bit against that and turned the subsequent novel into a widescreen epic, arguably the most epic Discworld has ever gotten, with various groups of mages fighting magical wars spanning continents and prophesised destinies being fulfilled.

There's a certain guilty pleasure to this. Pratchett is reasonably entertaining at large-stakes action, especially when it's delivered alongside a broad sense of humour. I suspect in the heart of many authors there's a yearning desire to break out vast magical towers that explode and mighty-thewed barbarian warriors smiting legion of disposable extras with a broadsword so huge it had to be forged with a gantry, and Pratchett does that with aplomb. The sly wit and intelligence of Mort has been sidelined here in favour of much more obvious jokes about barbarians and Grand Viziers twirling moustaches villainously (the sequences in Al-Khali - fortunately only briefly - flirt with Carry On movie levels of stereotyping).

The book adds surprisingly little to the greater Discworld mythos, which is weird given how massive and world-girdling the events are. A line at the end of the book that the memory of these events has been magically removed from the world feels a bit too cheesy; given the dangers the wizards unleash here, it's implausible they wouldn't be chased from civilised society (well, society at any rate), which is why I guess Pratchett decided to jump through some hoops to reset things to a status quo later on. The only lasting impacts are the fate of Rincewind - which sets up the novel Eric - and a larger starring role for the Librarian. We also get a bit more information on the Patrician and his pet dog, Wuffles, who recur later on, even though the Patrician is still a long way off from the peak of his characterisation.

Sourcery (***) is arguably the weakest of the first five Discworld books. It's Pratchett at arguably his broadest and least intellectually vigorous, going for surprisingly cheap laughs. There are some better gags (the One Horsemen and the Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse) and Rincewind, never the deepest of Discworld characters, get some decent development here, but overall it's a fairly disposable book and not a patch on the novels on either side of it.

[Maltaran]

There is one other lasting impact of Sourcery which doesn’t get mentioned till Moving Pictures - Ridcully gets made Archchancellor in large part because he was one of the few wizards who wasn’t involved.

[polishgenius]

Gotta say, most of the other stuff can be handwaved away but the change in the UU is the biggest sticking point in Pratchett's attempts to pain early-discworld and the later creation as the same world.

 

He also just plain ignores the Lancre Timeslip, of course.

[Werthead]

On 4/10/2021 at 12:51 AM, polishgenius said:

Gotta say, most of the other stuff can be handwaved away but the change in the UU is the biggest sticking point in Pratchett's attempts to pain early-discworld and the later creation as the same world.

He also just plain ignores the Lancre Timeslip, of course.

The Lancre timeslip isn't too much of a problem though. The Discworld timeline is a bit iffy in any case, with Pratchett once saying that time was passing at roughly  the same rate as in real life, but that really not working for Vimes/Sybil's relationship (unless Sybil was giving birth in her fifties) and a couple of other issues (Magrat and Verence's courtship being a decade or so rather than the couple of years implied in the books).

[Plessiez]

Definitely agree about Sourcery being the weakest of the first five Discworld books.  Actually, with the possible exception of Eric and The Last Hero (neither of which was ever really meant to be a proper novel as such anyway), I think it's probably the weakest book in the series up to Unseen Academicals or Snuff.  (Presumably there actually were people at the time the books came out who read Equal Rites and Mort and complained that they wanted more Rincewind, but ... well, it seems hard to imagine.)

Small Gods is the biggest problem for the idea that there's actually a consistent in-universe Discworld timeline, isn't it?  (Or, technically, the fact that there are cameos in Small Gods from characters who also show up in Pryamids is the problem, I suppose.)

[polishgenius]

50 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The Lancre timeslip isn't too much of a problem though.

Not hugely, but it makes some of Granny's relationships a bit implausible. Her thing with Ridcully, her visit to Ankh-Morpork in Masquerade after having been there in Equal Rites. Also makes her position with the other witches in the Aching series a bit odd, though there's obviously some retconning going on for how the witch community works there anyway.

Also you'd just have thought that in later mentions of Lancre, the running joke is people noting how tiny and insignificant it is and not how it vanished for 18 years.

 

 

47 minutes ago, Plessiez said:

(Or, technically, the fact that there are cameos in Small Gods from characters who also show up in Pryamids is the problem, I suppose.)

Depends who the cameos are I guess. I don't remember them but Pyramids has its own weird time thing going on that could explain some weirdness.


But ultimately it's down to that Pratchett didn't really care especially early on

[Maltaran]

Didn't Terry say once that any timeline inconsistencies are the result of the History Monks messing up?

[mormont]

2 hours ago, Plessiez said:

(Presumably there actually were people at the time the books came out who read Equal Rites and Mort and complained that they wanted more Rincewind, but ... well, it seems hard to imagine.)

Hard to imagine or not, that did happen in the letter columns of various magazines I was reading at the time. (Ah, letter columns... fandom of three decades past.)

[Derfel Cadarn]

Isnt there also a weird retcon re the Emperor of Twothumbs’ land, where he’s normal in the early books and becomes a complete psycho in Interesting Times?

Been a while since I’ve read the books

[Kyll.Ing.]

5 hours ago, Plessiez said:

Definitely agree about Sourcery being the weakest of the first five Discworld books.  Actually, with the possible exception of Eric and The Last Hero (neither of which was ever really meant to be a proper novel as such anyway), I think it's probably the weakest book in the series up to Unseen Academicals or Snuff.  (Presumably there actually were people at the time the books came out who read Equal Rites and Mort and complained that they wanted more Rincewind, but ... well, it seems hard to imagine.)

Hey, no dissing of The Last Hero. Those illustrations are magnificent. I agree the plot moves a little too fast for its own good, though.

I didn't find Unseen Academicals that bad, actually. Snuff I could see some arguments against, as it pretty much gives Vimes a new superpower out of nowhere and completely sidelines the rest of the Watch. In terms of the weakest Discworld books, no obvious candidates stand out, but Moving Pictures might receive an honourable mention, at least.

Oh, and in terms of strange timelines, I always found Rincewind's backstory a little strange to fit in. He first appears as a rather ordinary, if inept, wizard in The Colour of Magic where he has his adventure with Twoflower. Then he ... faffs around the University for a while (?) until the events of Sourcery, where he has another adventure that ends to him being banished to the Dungeon Dimension. He gets back from it in Eric, returns to the University. He spends some more time in blissful quiet at the University until Interesting Times takes him to the Counterweight Continent, whereafter a teleportation accident sends him to Fourecks in The Last Continent. After returning from there, he apparently stays full-time at the University.

But in the latter book, Rincewind is suddenly mentioned to have visited most of the Disc being chased around by people. Some of this happens "on-screen" in the aforementioned novels, but not nearly all of it, and we never see any implications of when it could have happened off-screen either. Later books (and appendix books such as the Discworld Emporium) mention him to have visited Nothingfjord, the Great Outdoors, Klatch, and a hundred other places we've never seen him have time to visit. Apparently he has had many chased-by-everyone adventures of the type we saw in The Light Fantastic, but when? For most of the timeline, his location is known and accounted for. He does not come across as well-traveled in his first appearance either. When did he have time to be chased all over the Disc, again?