Some serious federation issues going on today. This post doesnt even show up on the original community, I had to pull it in to lemm.ee manually. Hope this stuff gets sorted soon!
Anyway. I agree the first two books are underrated, you constantly see them being dismissed when people ask where to start reading and it seems a shame to me. They’re good books, and reading in order means you get to experience the build of quality and the changing world the same way Pterry did himself.
Other than that though I do think a lot of people, in appreciating the darker tone and biting satire of some books, overlook the value of absurd hijinks in others. The Last Continent, for example, is for sure not the strongest narrative. But it is jam packed with jokes and references even for a Discworld book, and that’s saying something!
Is it possibly because I came over from lemmy.world?
I do like The Last Continent! To me, the level of absurd hijinks there is about the same as Going Postal - not my favourite, but it seems to be beloved. There were more posts talking about the exploits of Moist anyway. Now, why is that? Is it the case, that Moist von Lipwig has a lot of vocal fans and Rincewind, our early hero, is not as popular anymore?
I can sort of see why people think of Rincewind as a bit one-note. He’s a coward, he runs away…that’s kind of it.
But it’s a fun note, and the situations he gets into are hilarious, so idgaf 😄
But he runs away and towards interesting times and dangerous situations. The most relatable hero, that man. Who wouldn’t run away when confronted by the kind of things he run into.
I like Raising Steam. While Shepard’s Crown is Pratchett saying goodnight to the lot of us, Raising Steam feels like a rockstar with a diagnosis doing one last world tour. Is the set as polished? Nah, but it’s a heartfelt goodbye to all the pieces that couldn’t fit in Crown’s story.
Spot on. It’s a good penultimate book.
Sourcery. It gets the ‘earlier book’ dismissal and like most Rincewind books gets relegated to the back burner in favour of the other threads (witches/ watch, etc)
It’s. Fucking. Glorious.
Hmmm I’ll start.
I think I would go for The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. Not sure if I would call them underrated, but I don’t think they have the same following as the later books. Maybe it’s deserved - as we know, they were written ‘by a younger, stupider author’ or something along those lines. The world-building only began there, PTerry was not quite yet in his full-on god-like-genius-with-language-stride (just let me have that one…!) and it’s more of an easy read, ligher kind of fun. Not quite so touching, or deep, or touching on so many important themes through the perfect mix of humour, sadness and kindness. Which I do agree with.
However, I have read them both as soon as they came out in my country, I think the Czech translation for both. And I remember reading and laughing out loud so much I cried, soooo many times. So did my father, who also read them around the same time. And my sister. The laughing out loud part throughout the entire book was not there in the later books, at least not for me. Of course I laughed at parts, and felt things at other parts, sometimes hopefully even when The Author planned. But not throughout the entire books anymore. And for that, these two stand out for me.
Now come on, someone, tell me why I’m wrong so we can get a nice conversation going!
Someone compared Pterry’s ability to mould language to Shakespeare, if only I remember where I heard or read this comparison.
I have recency bias with The Colour of Magic, reread it fairly recently and it’s quite brilliant, although the first 10-15 pages were difficult to get through because they were somehow opaque. So many characters I just met talking to each other and about each other, and it was often unclear to me who or what they were talking about. Then Twoflower arrived and saved it.
