If you want to understand the Rincewind story arc you have to read that series of novels in order. Same with the story arc dealing with Death and Susan. Same with the Watch, or with the Lancre witches. Pick up out of order, and it can get confusing sometimes.

But "The Truth" is just one of those simple one-shot stories. In some parts it appears to be an Ankh-Morpork City Watch story told from the outside, but it's not. It's a story about the Truth, what we believe the Truth to be, and what lengths people go to in order to control which version people see, and why. And in different parts it provides a great deal of insight into Discworld dwarves (nearly as much as "Last Elephant" did), and more importantly the nature of parents and their children be they humans or dwarves.

I liked this book. I'm recommending it to everyone here. Yes it starts a little slow, but once you get going, settle in, relax, you'll find yourself reading an amusing tale. The satire of things will flow over you, and in some ways it's a witty teacher who may expose you to things about people on the whole you never stop to think about.

Great book. Worth reading, whether you're a Pratchett fan or not.

Men at Arms didn't really require reading the others, either.

You may not get everything, but you could understand the story. Most are actually like that, you just won't get the past book references when they're out of order.

We have all the books (except Equal Rites for some reason but I know I've read that *shrugs*)

We also live really near him

Anyway, the books are great fun to read

Anyway, Pratchett is a great author. The Last Hero, the big illistrated one, is one of my favorites. I think its one of his best, and it has some of his best characters in it.

Carpe Jugulum was confusing, if read with no prior experience with the witches. On the other hand, both Pyramids and Moving Pictures also seemed to stand alone fairly well.

Its confusion haunts me still.

[ 07-04-2002: Message edited by: MorbId ]

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Niklas stumbled drunkenly to the keyboard and typed:
There's no real order but you should start with the color of magic and the light fantastic.. the very first and not quite as good as the rest but they start things off well

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He's a good author, a verry funny guy, he does great discriptions and dialogue, but I just can't read with the way he does plots and ends books and chapters. I just get so frustrated.

If you havent read them you must do so now!!

But...to answer the question at hand...

Rincewind Arc:
Colour of Magic -> Light Fantastic -> Sourcerer -> Eric -> Interesting Times -> Last Continent

Watch Arc:
Guards! Guards! -> Men At Arms -> Feet of Clay -> Jingo -> Fifth Elephant

Witches Arc:
Ask Lyinar

Death Arc:
Ask Lyinar, I get them mixed up since you can read them out of order til Susan comes along, then it's more linear.

He's one of the few authors I know of that doesn't use chapters at all in most books. I think there's only been one or two that I saw actual chapters in.

The chronological list:

The Color of Magic
The Light Fantastic
Equal Rites
Mort
Sourcery
Wyrd Sisters
Pyramids
Guards! Guards!
Eric
Moving Pictures
Reaper Man
Witches Abroad
Small Gods
Lords and Ladies
Men at Arms
Soul Music
Feet of Clay
Interesting Times
Maskerade
Hogfather
Jingo
The Last Continent
Carpe Jugulum
The Fifth Elephant
The Truth
Thief of Time
The Last Hero

The Witches Arc:

Equal Rites -> Wyrd Sisters -> Witches Abroad -> Lords and Ladies -> Maskerade -> Carpe Jugulum

The Death Arc:

Mort -> Reaper Man -> Soul Music -> Hogfather

The rest are sort of stand-alone books. They may involve characters from the other novels, but they're basically just cameo appearances, and the main story is about outside characters.

Pratchett also writes outside the Discworld series

Here's a listing of non-Discworld books

The Carpet People
Strata
The Dark Side of the Sun
The Unadulterated Cat

The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy: Only You Can Save Mankind -> Johnny and the Dead -> Johnny and the Bomb

Another series, and I can't for the life of me recall their name atm, but think The Littles or The Borrowers. You have the idea:

Truckers -> Diggers -> Wings

And of course, the Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett classic, Good Omens

Yes, I am a huge Pratchett fan

and "Good Omens" cracked me up. Can hardly wait til the movie comes out.

[edit: Buggerit, Deth too fast]

[ 07-04-2002: Message edited by: Dr. Pvednes, PhD ]

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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael stopped beating up furries long enough to write:

and "Good Omens" cracked me up. Can hardly wait til the movie comes out.

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There's gonna be a movie?!?! SWEET JESUS! This is great!

Cthulhu

which sucks. I am looking forward to it, though. Can hardly wait to see how they do the Horsemen.

Greatly looking forward to Good Omens

Small Gods was a great "Terry Pratchett looks at religion" story. He made the right satirical comments, emphasized the points that needed emphasizing...but like most religious epics, I can't bring myself to read it very often. Om the Turtle was hilarious though.

"Moving Pictures" is probably my favorite stand-alone book humor-wise. It was hilarious, and witty, and captured the bizarre feel of Hollywood (or Holy Wood) really well.

"The Truth" is my favorite that isn't a clearly humorous book. Wit and insight was he order of the day in "The Truth".

I find it ironic that William writes off the talking dog, Ankh heir and werewolf in the Watch as urban myths whe he's so dedicated to the truth

As for the bit about the heir, that's easy to dismiss. It could be a metaphor for the noble duty that cops do. "Truly they are kings among men" sort of thing. Plus all the evidence of the truth is buried.

The talking dog thing cracks me up, though. Especially since Gaspode, I gather from "Moving Pictures" wasn't ever really meant to be a regular character. At the end of Moving Pictures he goes back to being a normal dog, but then he shows up again in Men-At-Arms

That's the humorous part

For all his pursuit of truth, he disbelieves one of the true things

I will say though, not having Reaper Man made the beginning of Soul Music somewhat confusing. Susan sort of came out of nowhere for me, it took me a bit to figure it all out.

[ 07-06-2002: Message edited by: Chalesm ]

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Chalesm was naked while typing this:
"Reaper Man" is the last Pratchet book I need, which is a bit annoying as the death books have been among my favorites. Death is great, and the ultimate continous character (out of curiosity, is there any book where he doesn't at least have a quick appearence?). I'll just have to keep on checking the local bookstores for it.

I will say though, not having Reaper Man made the beginning of Soul Music somewhat confusing. Susan sort of came out of nowhere for me, it took me a bit to figure it all out.

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She's not in Reaper Man. At all. Soul Music is her first appearance. I get the impression it went like this...

Pratchett writes up Mort. Likes the story, likes writing about Death, didn't really by the end like the two characters of Mort and Ysabel and didn't really know what to do. Witches were better suited for the fairy tale kingdom story, so he thinks "Okay their story's done, let's write a story just about Death" and he writes Reaper Man.

Great novel...but there's no human element and after writing up what he has for Death, decides he's only really got half a story. So he adds on the Windle Poons/Wizards/Undead half of the story (which says good-bye to good old Windle Poons and introduces the Reg Shoe character who shows up in the Watch novels later on). By the end, he's got a really solid grip on what he likes about Death, but realizes he needs a human (or near-human) foil for Death to interact with. He's introduced the Death of Rats and the Death of Fleas, but DoR is more like Death's Id, running around doing the things Death is too formal to do.

So he gets this idea in his head for the story of rock and roll in the Discworld, but he doesn't want it to come off as a bland sequel to the Moving Pictures story, so he devises the character of Susan, and adds the Death story (probably the most heart wrenching moment in the Discworld series when you realize what it is, exactly, that Death's doing as he goes around the world). DINGDINGDING! we have a winner. Susan is the perfect middle ground between the human reader and the Eternal Death.

And every iteration we see Susan in thereafter (Soul Music leads to Hogfather which leads to Thief of Time) she gets a little more refined and Pratchett gets a little better at describing for the reader how exactly he sees Susan. Thief of Time was great because in some parts it was a discovery for Susan about an element of her personality she didn't really know about: She was kind of lonely.

And yes, Death's relationship with Rincewind has always been interesting. I still laugh at the description of Rincewind's hourglass, and at Death's reaction when the Devil mentions Rincewind to Death at the end of time in "Eric". It makes me wonder if Death ever did manage to track Rincewind down.

Also, Lyinar, there's one other discworld book for the list that very few people seem to either remember or know about, "The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents", a Pratchett-style working on the tale of the pied piper. I can understand why; it's aimed more at younger readers, and so is not his best or most hard-hitting work. not to mention if it wasn't for death-of-rats, you'd never even know it was set in discworld. However, it's still got Pratchett's trademark style.

Fifth Elephant had a strangely dark portent in one paragraph, though. Hope it doesn't happen.

Those were just the ones listed in Thief of Time

I'm looking forward to November. Night Watch comes out. Vimes going back in time. Should be quite interesting.

[Edit]Oh, and I found their name. The Bromeliad. The three books are officially the Bromeliad Trilogy.

[ 07-06-2002: Message edited by: Lyinar Ka`Bael ]

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Lyinar Ka`Bael impressed everyone with:
I'm looking forward to November. Night Watch comes out. Vimes going back in time. Should be quite interesting.

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Is it really him going back in time? I heard three versions of it...

One is that it's a look back at the time when Vimes was starting out in the Watch. We hear a lot of references to it but never see it.

A second one was that our Vimes DOES go back, but he somehow gets tied up into the thing with Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes, the original "Old Stoneface" who killed the last King of Ankh.

Third was that it's just a Vimes in time story.

quote:

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Lyinar Ka`Bael's fortune cookie read:
Well Amazon said he has to handle things with his younger self.

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Ahhhh sweet so it's sort of the first mixed with the third. Cool. Looking forward to it. The Watch novels are my favorite in the series...followed closely by the wizards.