Tag: Discworld

Mort

Mort

by Terry Pratchett (Victor Gollancz, 1987); audiobook read by Nigel Planer (Isis, 1995)

Pratchett_Mort

Mort is the book with which Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series turned from imaginative curiosity to comedic fantasy par excellence. The plot is atypically focussed for Pratchett, and Death (who in a mid-life crisis takes on an apprentice) becomes an instant fan favourite.

 

 

Night Watch

Night Watch

by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday, 2002); audiobook read by Stephen Briggs (Isis, 2002)

Pratchett_Night Watch

Night Watch is one of Pratchett’s least funny Discworld novels, in the best possible way. The gallows humour remains but the story — a poignant time travel paradox that sees Sam Vimes mentor his younger self through a bloody revolution — is more focussed.

 

 

Hogfather

Hogfather

by Terry Pratchett (Gollancz, 1996); audiobook read by Nigel Planer (Isis, 1999)

Pratchett_Hogfather

Pratchett might belabour the point, yet his stark critique of Christmas is so lavishly adorned that the humour tends to dominate. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a black comedy, it is Death (no less) and his granddaughter who bring the magic back to Hogswatchnight.

 

 

I Shall Wear Midnight

I Shall Wear Midnight

by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday, 2010); audiobook read by Stephen Briggs (Isis, 2010)

Pratchett_I Shall Wear Midnight

Though not among the funniest of the Discworld novels, I Shall Wear Midnight nevertheless upholds Pratchett’s near-ubiquitous drollery, rustling from within a serious treatise on intolerance and antagonism and other such weak points of human nature. Stephen Briggs proves a volant narrator.

 

 

Pyramids

Pyramids

by Terry Pratchett (Corgi, 1989); audiobook read by Nigel Planer (Isis, 2002)

Pratchett_Pyramids

Pratchett’s Discworld series truly hit its stride in this, the BSFA-winning seventh book. Pyramids is a self-contained and ingeniously conceived, desert-dry satire on the type of human thinking that underpins religious folly. Nigel Planer is suitably droll in voicing the befuddled participants.

 

Guards! Guards!

Guards! Guards!

by Terry Pratchett; read by Nigel Planer (Isis, 1995)

[first published by Gollancz, 1989]

Pratchett_Guards Guards

Some of the dialogue feels slightly laboured when read aloud (a small misgiving), but in the grand scale of all things magical and satirical this is the perfect introduction to Pratchett’s Discworld series. Planer handles with aplomb both narrative comedy and characterisation.

 

The Shepherd’s Crown

The Shepherd’s Crown

by Terry Pratchett (Harper, 2015)

Pratchett_Shepherd's Crown

Apposite to Terry Pratchett’s passing, his final novel sees the death of Granny Weatherwax (one of the first-introduced Discworld characters) and the befalling of her legacy to young witch Tiffany Aching (one who most embodies the series’ growth): a gentle, bittersweet finale.