A Comprehensive Guide for Reading the Discworld 🦧

Over the years, I have had many readers of my blog ask me about where I would start with Terry Pratchett/the Discworld series as a whole. I know his series is one that many would love to read but there are just so many books. So this post, is going to be a detailed look at his series as a whole and the many ways to read through it.

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.” Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

 

 

 Terry Pratchett: The Author 

 

Sir Terry Pratchett was known for his absurdist humor, fantastical worlds, and satire. His best known series was the Discworld which includes 41 books and many different companion books. Other popular books by Terry Pratchett are The Carpet People (his first published novel), Nation, Dodger, Good Omens (which he wrote with NG, though the majority of the book was written by Terry), The Bromeliad Trilogy, The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy, The Long Earth series (a science fiction series he wrote with Stephen Baxter), and so many other books.

Terry Pratchett is my favorite author. Over the years, I have read over 60 of his books and adore his writing style. He has been one of my biggest inspirations as a writer ever since I first picked up my first Discworld book back in 2017. I cannot believe it has been about nine years. 

 

 "The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That's the advantage of space. It's big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does.
People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing.
There's nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. But the fact that there's a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere."- The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

 

Welcome to the Discworld

 Many of the Discworld novels start with a description similar to the one above. They take place on a flat, circular world which sits on the backs of four elephants, which are standing on the back of a giant turtle named the Great A'Tuin. Terry used this fantastical world and humor to show very human issues.

Reading in Publication Order 📚

 There are many methods of figuring out what order to read the Discworld books. If you would like to see the books in the order that Terry wrote them, so you can see how his writing and world evolved with time, I would recommend the publication order. The series started in 1983 and continued until 2015. This is the method I chose to read the books and I enjoyed my time doing so. It was always a joy to pick up a new book in the series. I cannot say I loved ever single book, but I enjoyed most of them. Also, I will say that it took a a few books for Terry to really get into his style, so the earlier books do not show the full extent of his writing abilities. The series only gets better with time. 

  

 

 Reading the Subseries 📖

Another method of reading the books is through the subseries. The Discworld Series is divided into ARCs or Subseries, which each focus on a set of characters. They each can be read by themselves, though there is some overlap between them, but they are independent enough to stand on their own. I would recommend reading from the subseries that sounds the most interesting to you. Then, you would read the first book in it. Here are all of the subseries with information about each. 

Rincewind/ The Wizards of Unseen University Books: 

The Wizards of Unseen University/Rincewind books focus on the adventures and antics of the wizards both at their university and all over the Discworld. Many of these books specifically focus on the most inept wizard of them all Rincewind. The Wizards also appear in a few of the other books in the series including: Equal Rites and Hogfather.

Witch Books:

My favorite of the subseries is probably the Witch books. The books focus on magic and are set primarily around the country town of Lancre. It's interesting to see how different witch magic is from the wizards. The Wizards also make appearances in some of these books. 

 

 

 

Death Books:  

The character who appears in almost every book in the Disworld series is Death. He is a parody of many different personifications of death. He looks like most Grim Reapers, a skeleton dressed in a black robe, and carrying a scythe to reap souls. Unlike other depictions of death, Terry Pratchett's Death contemplates what it means to be human, adopts a human child, and loves cats. Most of his books focus on him and his adopted Granddaughter Susan Sto Helit.

 

The City Watch Books:  

The Ankh-Morpork City Watch is a fictional police force who are in the city-state Ankh-Morpork. They are often called The City Watch, The Watch, and were formally called The Night Watch. These books are some of the most popular in the series because of the strong character development, especially for Sam Vimes. Terry uses both parody and deep satire on police procedurals throughout the subseries. 

 

Standalone Books:

The first two of the standalone Discworld novels deal with gods. 

 

Pyramids takes place in the kingdom of Djelibeybi, which is the Discworld's equivalent to Ancient Egypt. It focuses on the new pharaoh Teppic, who has to take up the throne after his father dies. Teppic spends the novel trying to figure out how to be the next pharaoh, though he has some problems because he was trained in Ankh-Morpork's assassins' school. It also deals with a high priest named Dios, who "interprets" what the gods are saying for the pharaohs for many years. He is basically the ruler of the kingdom. This is one of my favorite Discworld books though it is not very popular. 
 

"In the beginning was the Word.

And the Word was: 'Hey, you!' "- Small Gods by Terry Pratchett 🐢

 

Small Gods is another of the standalone Discworld books that deals with the gods. It is one of the books that many people recommend for a good starting point in the series. I thought that Terry's his look at religion and its many forms was quite entertaining and insightful. His commentary about religious upbringings and also powerful religious figureheads was a great mix of poignancy and satire. This gets dark at times but Terry knew how to balance these topics in a way that makes the reader not only think about it all but also think about their own beliefs. I really liked that he wasn't leaning towards one point of view in this book. 
 

The other standalone book in the Disworld is The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. It is the first young adult book in the series. This book focuses on a cat named Maurice who is able to talk because he ate a rat who previously ate magical garbage from The Unseen University. The story is a clever retelling of the Pied Piper, where Maurice is the mastermind behind it all. It also has a book within the book which was a wonderful addition to the story. 
 

The Industrial Revolution Books: 

The Industrial Revolution books bring new technology to the Discworld. Each book focuses on something new such as: movies, newspapers, fixing the mail, banks, trains, etc. The books Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam all are part of the Moist Von Lipwig arc. Moist is a con artist and a fraud who is given the choice: be hanged or fix the Ankh-Morpork post office, in the novel Going Postal. 
 
Going Postal is considered one of the many great starting points for the series. It is definitely one of my favorite books in the series.  

 

 

Tiffany Aching Books:  

The other young adult books in the Discworld series. These focus on the character Tiffany Aching as she learns how to be a witch. The first book starts when she is nine years old and the series follows her until she's in her late teens. These books are connected to the Witch subseries and I highly recommend reading them after those books. 

 

 

Commonly Recommended Starting Places

Guards! Guards!, Small Gods, and Going Postal are some of the most recommended starting places in the series. They are some of the best books and really show Terry's writing style. I would definitely recommend them myself, though there are plenty of other places to start.

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”- A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett

 

Important Days for Terry Pratchett Fans

 

Here are some dates that many Terry Pratchett fans decide to honor Terry and read one of his many different books. 

 

- March 12th- The day he passed away. Many fans memorialize him by using the phrase GNU Terry Pratchett. GNU comes from his book Going Postal. It's a way of keeping his name alive. 

- Terry Pratchett Day: April 28th- His birthday

- The Glorious 25th of May- In honor of one of his books Night Watch. Many fans were a lilac. This day also coincides with another popular day in the sci-fi/fantasy community: Towel Day which is in honor of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 

 

Final Thoughts

I hope this helps out anyone interested in learning a little more about The Discworld. It is a series I have been loving for about nine years now and I know it will always be a favorite. I've been thinking about starting a complete reread of the series pretty soon. Over the years, I've reread many of the books but never the entire thing.

Happy Reading!