

The Bromeliad trilogy (aka the Nomes trilogy). If you want a Pratchett book to give to, or read to, kids from ages, oh, 9-10 and up, here are my suggestions: Recommended Pratchett entry points for kids (and kids at heart) Pratchett also wrote a bunch of non-Discworld books, some of which are aimed at children or teenagers. (Towards the end, Pratchett’s writing went downhill due to early onset Alzheimer’s.) But the best Discworld books are from the middle of the series, because you get ideas, themes, tight plotting, and well-drawn characters in addition to jokes. All Discworld books have their strengths. Over the years, they gradually got less jokey and stopped being parodies (with a few exceptions). The other thing to know about the Discworld books is that they started out as jokey parodies of other fantasy books, and of various other things (e.g., the movie industry).

There are also a few one-off Discworld books that don’t fall into any of the subseries. So if you want to get into the Discworld, one good way to do it is to start at or near the beginning of one of the subseries. Each subseries is mostly independent of the other subseries. The Discworld books fall into subseries depending on who the protagonist is.

But you definitely don’t have to read them in order. And later books build on and refer back to events in earlier books in ways large and small. Many characters recur in several books, developing over time as they do so. You can read the Discworld books in order, and there are some reasons to do so. Calling them “fantasy” novels really sells them short, because they’re much richer and more distinctive than the term “fantasy” might suggest. Terry Pratchett is best known for the Discworld series–40 fantasy novels set on The Disc, a flat world carried through space on the backs of four giant elephants riding on a giant turtle. So for one day only, this blog’s motto is changing from “Multa Novit Vulpes” to “ De Chelonian Mobile“. I’ve also read several of them to my 10 year old son. Terry Pratchett’s work is funny, smart, and wise, you should totally check him out.īut if you aren’t sure where to start, because boy howdy was Pratchett ever prolific, well, I’m here to help! I’ve read almost everything Terry Pratchett wrote*, and read some of them several times. Which is fine by me, because (i) I love Terry Pratchett’s stuff and grab any excuse to talk about it with both hands, and (ii) I just got my first Covid-19 vaccination so I’m feeling happy and self-indulgent. The comments on my previous post suggest to me that there is unmet demand among this blog’s readership for my opinions on the late, great Terry Pratchett‘s work.
