Terry Pratchett

The Discworld series

The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett

The first book in the Discworld series. Introduces the recurring characters - Rincewind, the most inept and incompetent wizard of all the Disc, currently residing at the Unseen University in the great city of Ankh-Morpork; Twoflower, the naive accidental tourist from the Counterweight Continent, a small bespectacled man of Auriental origin; and the Luggagge, a very loyal homicidal object with hundreds of legs, while being good at holding all sorts of personal items for its owner. The story begun in this book is continued in its sequel, The Light Fantastic.

For me, this is not one of Pratchett's best, but it is the first book of the series, and so I do keep a copy of it on my shelf. However, I tend to encourage people not to start reading the series from this beginning, because I have seen it put a lot of people off reading the rest of the series, some of which are excellent books.

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Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett

In the Discworld, 8 is a very special number. There are not 7 colours in the rainbow, but 8, and the last colour is Octarine, which has magical properties. (read The Colour of Magic for more on this). As such, the eighth son is likely to have magical powers, and become a wizard. Unfortunately for one impatient about-to-die wizard, he hands his staff over to an eighth child before checking its gender - hence Esk grows up to manifest magical powers, but women are not allowed to become wizards. It is only with the help of Granny Esmerelda Weatherwax that she goes to Ankh-Morpork to try to change the minds of the wizards who run the Unseen University...

This one is not bad. However, my only gripe is that the Granny Weatherwax of this book is not as sharp as Granny in the later books, and thus, not half as fun to read about.

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Mort - Terry Pratchett

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Terry Pratchett

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Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett

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Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett

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Small Gods - Terry Pratchett

Poor Brutha. The oldest novice in Om, and likely to be so for the rest of his life. But one day, his god, the Great God Om (holy horns) speaks to him, and it should be a joyous occasion, for it is the time of the coming of the 8th prophet. However, the fact that it is coming from a small helpless tortoise (you can get good eating on one of those), and only Brutha can hear him, is causing him a lot of trouble. The fact is, despite a giant congregation, the highly organised religion of Om has led to a lack of true belief, and thus Om has actually become a small god, in danger of being taken over and forgotten. His only hope left is Brutha, who truly believes, but is rather stupid and lumbering and meek. It is only when the evil subdeacon Vorbis tries to use Brutha's special gift of memory to attack their neighbours, the Ephebians, that life seems to get better and worse for Brutha all in one go...

I really like this book - so much so that I used it as one of my texts for an essay on Relgion and Literature for year 12 1 unit religion (waste of a unit though). It is a critique on organised religion and the lack of belief and faith from its believers; very pithy and applicable in Australia, where in each census it is determined that about half the population believes itself to be either Catholic or Anglican, yet church attendance and adherence in these two denominations is falling rapidly and steadily while other denominations and even other religions are increasing in popularity. However, this book does not attack religion or belief in God - in fact, it encourages the idea that true belief comes from a personal relationship with God: connection, not distraction. Ok, so not all its concepts may be acceptable to those who believe in God (such as the idea of gods needing humans to survive and grow in stature) but as a statement of faith and belief it is encouraging.

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Soul Music - Terry Pratchett

Imp y'Celyn ('Bud of the Holly'), an impestuous, muscially talented druid, comes to Ankh Morpork after a bitter fight with his father about his future. At first, his dreams of making it as a successful musician in the big city is thwarted by threatening greedy guilds, a lack of money, and a broken harp, but his luck picks up after he forms a band with a dwarf (Glod) and a troll (Lias, later Cliff), and starts playing an guitar they find in a mysterious shop that seems to have popped up out of nowhere, but seems to have been around forever. Playing their first (illegal) gig in the meanest pub in town, Imp (now called Buddy) cheats death through music. Susan, Mort's daughter and thus Death's granddaughter, cannot believe it. She has taken over her grandfather's duties, learning on the job, as it were, as Death has gone missing to go find out how to forget all the memories, from the past and the future, that are in his mind. She decides to find out what is keeping Buddy alive, while protecting him from many unscrupulous people who would like to see him dead. For Buddy, and his band, are now famous - pioneering the Discworld's catchiest new music - Music with Rocks In (as Cliff's instrument consists of rocks hit against each other). This new music sweeps through Ankh Morpork, causing the normally sane, and the normally insane, to wear lots of leather, playing "Pathway to Paradise" badly on guitars, and acting like rebels. But for Buddy, time is running out, for the music is keeping him alive for its own nefarious reasons...

This book is lots of fun for those interested in music, but especially of rock from the 70s. Many in jokes abound - a copycat band names themselves first as Insanity, then in succession as Suck, Surreptitious Fabric, The Whom, Blots and lastly Lead Balloon, which may not seem very funny until you realise that certain famous UK and American rocknroll bands of the 70s were Madness, KISS, The Velvet Underground, The Who, The Inkspots and Led Zeppelin (oh come on, you must have at least heard of one or two of them?!). Anyway, I like this book because it has a lot of comedic depth that isn't so obvious first go around, but gets better the more you read it. You gotta love rock n roll =).

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Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett

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The Author

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