this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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I really love Douglas Adams books and just going through the middle of the colour of magic... Not feeling like the best book ever, but enjoying It so far. Any recommendations for the next one from Terry Pratchett's discworld saga? Too many to choose from.. π
Edit: didn't expect so many replies, thank you all!!
There's a reading order guide. Take your pick! I agree that The Color of Magic is one of the worse starting points. I liked the Watch novels (starting with Guards! Guards!).
You people are insane, I tried the ebook for the first one from my library: 7 copies, 37 people waiting
It's a great book. It's just got some fantastic competition.
Lol I tried starting with colour of magic and hated it.
So which series do you start on? Rincewind, Witches, Death, or Watch? Does it matter?
Whichever you want. It doesn't really matter.
Pick whichever of the orange βstarter novelsβ you want (maybe read series synopsis and pick whichever appeals to you most) and proceed down the flowchart. Once you finish one line, go to another.
Where you start is largely a matter of preference, it's true, but beginning at the start of a subseries makes sense.
Rincewind is a great protagonist. He stars in The Colour of Magic, but several other books also have him. The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic are a pair, the first two books and one story told in two parts. They're fun but a bit slight. They do introduce Rincewind, Twoflower, The Luggage, Lord Vetinari, The Librarian, Ankh Morpork, Unseen University and a few other things.
The Witches have been my least favorite Discworld books, but I'm much in the minority there. They do have some great characters.
The Death books are uniformly great. Although Death is a main character in all of them, I think it's only Reaper Man in which he's the main character. Other characters are Mort, Ysabelle, Albert and later Susan.
The Watch books center around the watchpeople, but especially Capt Vimes. Other characters include Carrot, Angua, Cotton, Nobby, CMOT Dibbler, Gaspode, Detritus, and Vetinari also usually plays a role.
Many, but not all, of the Discworld novels are focused around the biggest city on the Discworld, Ankh Morpork. The Wizards, Watch and Industrial Revolution series are mostly set there. The Witches novels are mostly set in the country of Lancre, and so are a bit more rural. A few books are what you might call one-offs, set in a place that's never returned to, and that makes them good stand-alone books. I think maybe Small Gods is the best of these.
I would recommend going through at least the first few in order because of world building. My favorite book is Night Watch though.
Colour of magic and light fantastic are 2 of the worst books in the discworld series. They're not bad books, but nothing compared to what comes later. I read the series in chronological order and don't regret it, so don't give up on it. You can also follow the story arcs, if one particularly appeals to you.
Witches is a significant step up, and it only gets better from there, as Pratchett hits his stride.
I disagree, they set the scene for what's to come.
We see ankh morpork and the wider discworld through the eyes of rincewind (lives it, knows it, mostly hates and/or scared of it) and twoflower (all new, loves it all, naive).
So it sets the stage for all the other characters to enter and exit from there onwards.
Don't get me wrong, they are important books, and quite good. They just lack something compared to the later books. It's like the shutter start effect on some films. Initially it's a bunch of stills. At a critical point it becomes a stuttering moving image. It finally becomes a living breathing film.
You can go with the chronological order of publication or by series. So far I like the Death and the Guards series the best.
Read all the night's watch books. They are hilarious. Mort is good as a stand alone and the witches books are brilliant too.