Terry Pratchett books

Terry Pratchett is probably the only writer who has used the bloom of epic fantasy in order to create satirical books. In his work, Pratchett perfectly reflects our everyday situations with all it's imperfections but the most of his novels are happening on well known Discworld.

Pratchett's characters are freed from the burden of perfection and are very similar to us, ordinary mortals. Wizards are like conceited univeristy professors that usually don't have any clue what they are doing. This is especially true for Rincewind, the most incompetent wizard of all time, who willy-nilly saves the world all the time. There are also witches who always want everything to be their way and even when it's not, they won't admit that.

On the Discworld, time and space have strange characteristics, but it's normal if you know that there are many gods whose 'idea of having fun is playing hopscotch on a minefield'. Regardless of whether they believe in God, people have to die anyway. This is why Terry Pratchett has a character named Death. Death is a skeleton with a black robe and scythe. He is also known as an anthropomorphic personification of the death.

Although magic that exist on Discworld is one of the important factors in Pratchett's novels, it's not the only culprit for all the incredible events that take place in this world. Mostly responsible for this are of course humans (and other similar creatures), and probably the best place to find this out is the greatest city on Discworld, Ankh Morpork. This is definitely very organized city. Every social structure can find it's place here, and you can be sure that every craft has it's guild. The more serious type of job is involved, the guild is more accountable. This of course means that best guilds are thieving guild and guild of killers.

Pratchett's sentences are not only humorous, but also effective. His characteristic is to use complicated words and phrases in order to make an impression. Nevertheless, any educated reader, can't help but notice that any magical event that takes place on Discworld has it's foundations in slightly amended scientific and philosophical facts, which Pratchett obviously knows very well. He often explains some phenomenon the way that our scientist do, and than rejects that claim as absurd, just to give us another explanation that is actually a well known fallacy. One of the examples is the world which has the shape of a disc.

You can say that Terry Pratchett often uses intertextualityt, especially when he writes about some religious myths, regardless what religion is about. Through his novels you can see him using various books and stories as a starting point of his writing, but he always has to change a few details, enough to make it very funny, but not to much so we can see what he alludes on.

Very first book about Discworld is 'The Colour of Magic'. This is the book about Rincewind, and through the story you will become familiar with all of the strangeness of this world. This story will continue with the 'Light Fantastic', which is also mainly about this unbelievable wizard.

'Mighty Battles! Revolution! Death! War! (and his sons Terror and Panic, and daughter Clancy).' This is what the 'Interesting Times' is about. A lot of different troubles are going to happen to the world, and the only person who can help the world is of course Rincewind, also known as a wizard that can't spell the word wizard.

Other books about Rincewind: 'Sourcery', 'Eric' (parody of 'Faust'), 'The Last Continent'...

In the 'Equal Rites' you will find more than you ever wanted to know about girls who want to be a wizards, and you will meet the greatest witch ever produced by literature, Granny Weatherwax. He will write again about this extraordinary women in his novel 'Wyrd Sisters'. As probably everyone knows: 'Whitches are not by their nature gregarious, and they certainly don't have leaders. Granny Weathrwy was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn't have.' So, in 'Wyrd Sisters', you will finally meet Nanny Og and Magrat Garlick, Granny's best friends and companion in all of her adventures. This book is mostly a parody of Shakespeare's work.

In 'Morth' you will become more familiar with the character of Death and his life and responsibilities. You will adore him. His adventures will be continued in the novel 'Soul Music' in which Death becomes depressed because of the nature of his job. He can't stand it anymore, so someone else will have to take on this difficult duty. At the same time, new kind of music becomes popular all over the Discworld. It's known as Music With Rocks In, so you can guess what Terry Pratchett is alluding this time.

'Pyramids' is the book that refers to ancient civilisations, such as Egypt, Troy and Greece (in this book, Greeks give the Trojans a wooden cow, as a parody on Trojan Horse). In this novel, Pratchett also writes about irrational numbers and big crisis among the Pythagoreans when they realised that this type of number exists.

'Guards! Guards!' is classic Ankh-Morpork book. You will learn about the policemen of this great city, and you will never look at the dragons in the same way as before. In 'Men at Arms', guard is back. They need a new man, but they would accept a dwarf or two. You can also read about them in 'Feet of Clay' where they are investigating a murder case and in Jingo, where the new land surfaces.

'Moving Pictures' is all about the Holy Wood hill. As you can imagine, this is a hilarious story about making a movie that explores all the famous cliches on this topic.

In 'Witches Abroad', we again meet Pratchett three witches, who are on the mission to prevent servant girl from marring a prince. Of course, you can not stop that kind of story very easily. People like happy endings, and this is that kind of a story. 'Lords and Ladies' is also a book about those witches, but in this one, there are also elves. And, as Granny said, everyone just remember how beautiful they are, and not how cruel they can be. They need to be stopped, and you can imagine who will take that task.

If you like the Phantom of the Opera, you will like a novel 'Maskerade'. But witches don't approve this behavior, and they will go all the way to Ankh-Morpork just to make everyone do what they want. Similar thing happens when vampires try to fight them in 'Carpe Jugulum'.

'Small Gods' is a book about religion, but in Pratchett's funny manner. He uses all the famous symbols such as shape of the Earth and Inquisition in order to create this hilarious story.

On Discworld, Christmas is called Hogswatch. But somehow, Hogswatch has disappeared and Death has to take it's place and bring toys to the kids.