The Discworld Thread

Night Watch is an amazing book, but it's really different from the other Discworld books. It's darker and grimer, very depressing. Still, it's one of my favourites, it's just so good. But I wouldn't recommend it to somebody who had never read anything from Discworld, because it's so full of little bonuses for fans (I remember the fangasm... I mean, the excitement, when I read the scene with the colouring book(?) with tiger, and at the end it turned out that this boy... is Vetinari). I, personally, started reading Discworld series with The Fifth Elephant. The second or third page and I knew I found a writer with the best sense of humour ever. I was also suprised (and had mixed feelings about it) that he wasn't afraid to kill some really cool supporting characters. This was four years ago, I think, and Terry Pratchett is my favourite writer to this day; the fact that he has Altzheimer's Disease is just so heartbreaking...

edited 11th Jun '11 1:58:08 PM by Ktosza

My favourites would be Lord and Ladies, Unseen Academicals, Thud and all the Moist von Lipwig books.

Come to think of it, is it just me or is Discworld moving away from the blatant magic of the witch and wizard books?

edited 11th Jun '11 4:59:45 PM by Chaosjunction

Makes sense if Interesting Times is of any indication, especially if we compare Ankh Morpok from the first books to the most recent ones.

By the way, just finished Thud!, Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic. Now, I'll take a break from Discworld and start reading Good Omens.

EDIT: Wrong book.

edited 11th Jun '11 5:44:50 PM by Fancolors

It is, in general (and I personally find that a bit sad, but that's up to everyone's own opinions). Unseen Academicals had more magic than a lot of the recent books, though.

I wish Pratchett would give Ankh-Morpork a break and write about someplace else on the Disc, though. Discounting the Tiffany Aching books, when was the last Discworld book to take place outside Ankh-Morpork? Monstrous Regiment. That was five books ago (again, discounting the Tiffany ones). I want to find out what's going on in the Agatean Empire or Überwald or whatnot.

And apparently the upcoming book is, again, set in Ankh-Morpork and featuring the Watch. It's possible to have too much of a good thing.

Finally read The Colour of Magic. It amazed me how Discworld had managed to evolve from a generic fantasy parody to the dark and intelligent satire we have today. Mr.Pratchett has clearly matured as a writer over the years.

According to the page for the next City Watch book, Vimes is on vacation, so it presumably won't take place entirely in Ankh Morpork.

edited 12th Jun '11 8:09:33 AM by Pulsar

Ah, cool. I didn't do an awful lot of research on the subject.

Apparently it's set (for at least part of the story) in a country house that belongs to Sybil's family.

IIRC, the blurb made mention of that thing about how when policemen go on holiday, they always end up finding crimes.

No indication how much the novel is in that setting, though.

^In a Barsetshire, I believe.

edited 13th Jun '11 5:38:33 AM by Yuanchosaan

Oh, the Discworld series is currently the only paperback I'm buying and reading. I still have a lot to catch up on, because I did some skipping around. I absolutely love the witches, for instance, and just had to read all their stories. Vimes and company comes in a good second. I really didn't like the standalones like Monsterous Regiment and especially Small Gods, although it had the best ending I've ever read. It was just so depressing getting there.

I also need to begin the Tiffany Aching series. I hope being "young adult" they are not too simplified.

Small God is wonderful!

I am impatiently waiting for the witches books to be released on Kindle, although i may break down and get them in dead-tree form if it takes too long.

The first one I read was Reaper Man. I think that's quite a good intro to the series, actually.

I read Night Watch first of all the Watch books and Guards Guards last. It's odd to watch the evolution of Vimes' character going backwards, and Sybil changed a lot.

A friend of mine started the series with Night Watch. When we explained to her that it wasn't the ideal book to start reading, she said she did wonder why everyone was so preoccupied with this Vetinari fellow.

The very first Watch book I read is The Fifth Elephant. I have read very book of the theme except for Guard! Guard and Men At Arms. I couldn't find them in the school library.

Colour of Magic is the one I started with, and I think it is much better than many people around here give it credit for being. It's in a different style, being a parody rather than satire, but I don't think it's a worse book. I believe the second one I read was Thud!, which is one of my favourites in the series.

edited 14th Jun '11 6:56:16 AM by MrShine

I can tell it's a parody. It still seems a little dry though, for all its wit.

I can see some of the Night Watch books being satire rather than parody but other than that... Which other ones do most people say are more satire than parody?

Reaper Man and Lords and Ladies are my favourite Discworld books

I've only recently found Discworld, and am reading them chronologically by order of release date from Color of Magic on. The next one on my list that is currently speeding towards my library is Small Gods. A lot of people seem to like that one, I guess.

I've also seen the films of Color of magic and Hogfather, both of which were quite good. I mean, there are all the usual hallmarks of adaptation, but despite the visibly low budget they had very good acting and plain imagination to boot.

EDIT PS: And Reaper Man was great. Just mentioning.

edited 19th Jun '11 9:28:30 AM by Jeroic

Im currently reading I Shall Wear Midnight and a possible case of Fridge Brilliance occured to me. One Man comments upon the current executioneer of Ankh-Morpork, Mr Trooper, and that, while being a decent man, some people tend to twitch while beeing hanged (instead of dying very quickly and somewhat mercyfully) and he considered that not professional. Now it ocurred to me that the people who twitch might be people like Moist whom Vetinari considers "useful"

What do you think?

edited 21st Jun '11 7:33:16 AM by 3of4

Thud! is amazing, a sort of distillation of everything I love about the Discworld books. I usually recommend Guards Guards to first-timers, though. The Color of Magic (like all of the Rincewind books) was a bit tough for me to get into. I' m not sure if I would have liked it (them) if I hadn't already been hooked on the Guards and Witches books.

What do people think of the most recent ones, I Shall Wear Midnight, and Unseen Academicals?

I've reviewed them: I Shall Wear Midnight and Unseen Academicals. I thought they were both very good reads but not his best. He's starting to get a little frayed around the edges and seems to have trouble keeping his plots aimed at where they're going.

I had the same thought. The books are still great, but they seem looser.

I didn't like Thud much (for a Discworld book). It had good drama, and the Summoning Darkness was an excellent villain, but a lot of it just rubbed me the wrong way, especially coming right after Going Postal, which I consider one of the high points of the entire series. The message felt anvilicious; I already knew prejudice is bad. The basic plot (war is triggered after the assassination of a leader from an outside group) felt recycled from Jingo, but without all the other stuff that made Jingo great, and it felt painfully clear from the start that the main suspect wasn't guilty. Sally was an uninteresting character. Perhaps most damningly, it went back to the darkness and angst of Night Watch and Monstrous Regiment, just when I thought Going Postal heralded a return to comedy. Don't get me wrong: Pratchett writing drama is still awesome. But if I want well-written drama, I can read any other good dramatic writer. If I want Pratchett-style comedy, I don't have anywhere else to turn.

Also, this isn't the fault of the book as much as its fanbase, but people keep talking about how the dwarves and trolls symbolise this-or-that Real World ethnic group. I think that's a reductionist way to look at a book that wasn't written (or so I assume) as an allegory. Also, some of the analogies people have made are loaded with Unfortunate Implications. Dwarves are Muslims because they're dogmatic and violent and restrict the actions of their women? Trolls are black people because they're moronic and thuggish and do drugs? Man.

The new books? I thought Unseen Academicals was good. Just... Pratchett's illness is making this very painful to say, but it felt like a titanic effort to end the series on a high note, rather than yet another Discworld offering for me to wolf down and wait for the next one. Still, it introduced good new characters (I even liked the minor ones, like Bengo Macarona), some jokes were laugh-out-loud worthy, and on a personal note, it parodied one of my favourite poems at the end. I think the revelation about Nutt's heritage would have been more powerful if we'd ever seen a hint that he could be dangerous.

I thought I Shall Wear Midnight was fresher; I certainly didn't get that almost elegiac note of "let's try to hit another high point" from it. I haven't cared about the Feegles since Carpe Jugulum (I don't think they merited their own books), but I loved everything else. I'm starting to think I've become too habituated to Pratchett's plotting and Chekhovs Guns, though: I could see how Tiffany was going to defeat the bad guy as soon as the confrontation was set up. (I had the same problem with the micro-mail in Unseen Academicals.) While I was admittedly sad to see Tiffany and Roland having broken up, I do like how Pratchett subverted the expectation for Letitia to be a Libby or a Dumb Blonde.

Whew. My verdict: the series is still strong. Unseen Academicals just gave me such a fear of it going downhill. Even so, I'll probably re-read it soon.

edited 23rd Jun '11 11:09:18 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

I guess it doesn't bother me that Thud talked about substantially the same thing as Jingo. I think that Thud was a tighter story and a more satisfying read than Jingo (although I liked Jingo), even if it covered a lot of the same ground (and did it? Jingo was about states competing over land, Thud about nations competing over cultural identity). I appreciate the point about Pratchett-style comedy. And I probably should re-read Unseen Academicals.