Where to Start Reading Discworld BooksĪs I just mentioned, every one of the forty-one Discworld novels (with one exception, which we’ll get to) is a self-contained fantasy book. So, if you read the Discworld books chronologically, you can watch a world shift from a mediaeval place to an industrial one. This means that technological advancements do come along. However, despite each novel being self-contained, the world is moving forward, and progress is made. One subtly genius thing about the Discworld is that it begins as a fairly standard medieval-esque fantasy world, complete with knights and wizards and dragons. That’s a vital thing to know about the Discworld. This means that his comedy is always punching up, not down.

Pratchett was the kindest author to have ever existed a man with an enormous heart and boundless compassion.

This means that, while a lot of his comedy is creative, goofy, and charmingly innocent, much of it is specifically political wit and satire. Sir Terry was a satirist, and many of the Discworld novels have plots, characters, and events that satirise specific social and political topics. Pratchett used the Discworld as a way to philosophically explore real-world social and political issues, reframing them in a comedic fantasy setting. The vastness of the Discworld and its eccentric cast of characters offer a source of solace and comfort to fans who love to live within this wonderful world.īeyond how imaginative and welcoming the Discworld is, it’s also a place of humour, clever political wit, and real-world social allegories. Places and people become familiar, and the Discworld starts to feel like a second home. This means that, the more Discworld novels you read, the more you explore that world. Pratchett wrote forty-one Discworld fantasy novels before his death, and each is set on the flat world supported by A’Tuin. He is orbited by a small sun and moon the disc has an edge, over which people might tumble into the abyss and his shell is pockmarked with asteroid craters. Put simple, the Discworld is a fantasy universe created by one man: Terry Pratchett.īased on real-world mythology, it’s a disc-shaped world hurtling through space on the back of a giant turtle, supported by four elephants which stand balanced on its shell.

The colour of magic the light fantastic