A friend of mine gave me the first 5 book of discworld as a present. He read them a long time ago and he really liked the story. He's been nagging me to read the whole series for a while now and I am not sure if it's worth the time investment seeing as there are 41 books.
He refuses to explain anything about the books because he want to avoid spoilers. Can someone tell me their experience with the series (keep spoilers to a minimum pls). Thanks
by SuspiciousNormalDude
6 Comments
Just pick up a random book and read a chapter and if it’s for you, you’ll know. I resisted for a long time, mainly because I didn’t vibe with the various translations I encountered, but once I was able to read the og, I enjoyed it greatly. You also don’t have to read all 41 books.
Pratchett is a legend. Very creative, witty and his prose is incredible. Mort was my first book, there’s a bunch of different reading orders you can try. If you don’t like one of his books, try another. I’m fairly certain you’ll find one to enjoy.
Each book stands on its own, you don’t need to read the whole series, let alone read it in order. Hell, most of the time people tell you to start with Guards Guards or Mort and circle back to The Colour of Magic because the first book is so unlike the rest of the series. Just pick up one that sounds/looks appealing and see if it’s for you. Or ask your friend which one is his favorite and start there.
I’m currently rereading Discworld from start to finish because I’m finally ready to read The Shepard’s Crown and I want the full context.
It’s not one continuous story, just a setting. You can go out of order and all but two books are complete in themselves. If you have the first five, I’d suggest reading Mort. That’s when Pratchett moved away from pure pastiche and started doing real plots. Make a decision after that.
It’s extremely long so it’s too much to ask someone to read it all. He could just talk to people about it on the discworld subreddit 🤪
Your friend has given you the wrong impression! It’s not one big “the story”, and it’s not a series where spoilers are really a big deal. Each book is essentially a self-contained story, although some characters appear in multiple books.
The special thing about Discworld is that Pratchett had a *tremendously* deep and wide general knowledge about the world, and he packed his setting full of fun riffs on everything under the sun. Many of the books are loose satires of a real topic, era or event – e.g. *The Truth* is about the news business; *The Last Continent* is about Australia, and particularly the wave of Australian pop culture around the 1980s (Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee, Priscilla, etc).