A world held up by four elephants standing on the back of a turtle floating through the cosmos. Where did it come from? Where will it go? No one knows. What is for certain is that the Discworld that rides atop this menagerie is one of the most wonderful and robust in all of fantasy. Like Tolkien, if he never bothered trying to make any of it make a lick of sense.
Terry Pratchett (co-writer of Good Omens, among many other things) built one of our most beloved comedy & fantasy institutions in Discworld. With a sprawling cast of characters and locations, he created a unique space to tell stories and dispense hidden little lessons along the way. This is the kind of space that spawns board games and world maps, visual guides and encyclopedias, all with a wonderful glow of affection, levity, and not taking fantasy so darn seriously.
It’s all built on the back of The Color of Magic, the first in a long line of Discworld books. This means the bricks are piled on the back of Rincewind. The incompetent wizard who was kicked out of magic school after learning only one spell are the first pair of eyes through which we see this far flung plane. He’s the perfect envoy for Practchett, setting up exactly what he’s trying to do with these flights of fancy he’s set his mind to. Rincewind spends much of this first book tangling with trolls, swords with bloodlust, dryads with a vengeance, and little demons that make your cameras work.
The marquee character has to be Death. The reaper here takes on a more genteel role, always menacing but more as an old friend ribbing you that you’re about to die. He’s spun off into TV movies and animated specials. Though he only plays a sort of running gag role in The Color of Magic, it’s a memorable turn that tells of great stories as yet to be told (in phenomenal books like Mort).
You can read Discworld in any sort of order you choose, but why not start at the beginning? The Color of Magic is a fun, lighthearted piece that you can sink into for a couple brisk reads. It comes highly recommended by me, a guy that reads things.
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