Terry Pratchett's Diskworld Series

[glass_houses]

Pratchett explicitly made the number one employer of women to be the seamstresses guild, basically creating an off-page legion of happy hookers, and also anachronistically inserted condoms into the proxy medieval era, so that he never had to include any negative consequences.

Pratchett was born in 1948; he lived early enough to know people who'd been born and raised in the Victorian slums, a time when the vast majority of women still faced a stark choice between being a wife or becoming a prostitute; many lower class women were both. He makes it frequently clear what a dangerous profession it was, and how brutally tough the women who had to do it were. Also, the history of contraception and prophylactics in Britain are a fascinating hole to fall down, and it's certainly nowhere as simple as, "At first there were no condoms, and then there was." Animal intestine condoms go back to at least the 1600s, and even though they were probably only accessible to the rich, they were still out there. Women used devices like sea sponges and natural acidic spermicides- like lemon juice- from the 1800s onwards. In the 1880s lower class street walkers would frequently try to convince their customers that they had penetrated the vagina when in fact they were holding the customer's penis at the top of their thighs; many succeeded in doing so, from what I've read. These women are who he based the Seamstresses on. and the Seamstresses weren't 'happy hookers' by any means.

While the Discworld series started out as medieval inspired, it evolved fairly quickly into a more 1700s-1800s time period. Pratchett based a lot of things on what he grew up on personally, or was told by people who'd lived it.

I like Nanny Ogg, but Nanny Ogg is literally a cheerful fucker and Granny Weatherwax is Granny Weatherwax, basically the same dichotomy.

Again, mate, context. Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax started as parodies of old English country women, the cheerful mother of many and the bitter spinster, but very quickly they were adopted into a very old cultural and religious trope called "The Maiden, The Mother, and the Crone the Other One. This involved both old British country superstition, and also takes influence from works that are frequently read as part of something called, "a classical education", another British institution.

I am by no means saying that the Discworld is a deep or complex work of literature, but much of it is based on the actual history and old culture of the British Isles, which Pratchett personally experienced. He didn't read a couple of pamphlets at the local museum, he actually lived a lot of this shit or was raised by people who did. I certainly enjoyed the Discworld saga as a teenager, but rereading many of the books as an older adult, there is a fair amount of shit in there that I missed the first few times around. There's a big difference between 'simple' and 'accessible'.

 

[Alouatta Simia Belzebul]

I'm a brit myself, I'm completely familiar with the context he was writing in. The 'crone mother maid' is stuff he himself explains in the books, several times, not new information.

And he doesn't talk about the dark side of things until the much later books - his earlier books have the prostitutes actively fighting for 'reasonably priced love' instead of 'free love', and mainly represented by Mrs Palm, who is a madam and in real life would have been a former working girl who aged out and began to groom others to replace her. While Pratchett unquestionably read Henry Mayhew (a social surveyor of the victorian working classes) he never actually discussed this stuff in the books.

I'm also familiar with practices such as lambskin / animal intestine / sponges, but he doesn't talk about the history of condoms in the books, he immediately introduces Wallace Sonky the rubber condom maker in the fifth element, where the rest of the book is about the literally feudal relationships between the werewolf clans and the peasants of uberwald.

I'm not calling Pratchett simple or for idiots, I am calling it accessible for and primarily aimed at teenagers, so if you're jumping to feeling insulted, calm down.

Speaking of the witchcraft stuff, he definitely knew his witch history - I would guess that Lancre was named after Pierre de Lancre, for example, because it's too much of a coincidence otherwise - but again, when it came to I shall wear Midnight, the misogyny and distrust that leads to the witch trials / cunning man happening is described as a 'miasma' or something that just happens rather than grounded in social history of witch trials and similar social phenomenons. I put it down to him already being affected by the dementia and unable to flesh out books as he previously had done, but I don't know.

 

[TurboNAS]

I started the Discworld series earlier this year. Only read the first five books so far. I have to say that Mort is my favorite of them Death is a good character. Is there any bad books in the series worth skipping or should I just read them all?

I’m having a lot of trouble getting into Raising Steam and Shepherd’s Crown but that’s not surprising, they’re the end of the series and I get sad when a favorite series wraps up.

Of the rest of the books Soul Music and Unseen Academicals are the two I’ve not been able to get back into. They’re not bad, but not as fun as the others. The Sam Vimes books are my favorite by far and I’d recommend jumping right to Guards, Guards to start getting into those.

The nice thing is the Discworld books are self-contained but have references to prior events. You won’t miss anything major by jumping around, but there are a few aha moments if you read them in order.

 

[Anon88]

Ok I'm bumping this old thread because I have a question.
So of the Discworld books I read the only two that I found myself kind of bored with is Wyrd Sisters and Equal Rites. Is it just me or do other people here find the Witches books to not be as good as the other books?

 

[Betonhaus]

I think they were fine, but each main character series has a different theme and setting and it's probably normal to have some that you aren't interested in. I really liked the Tiffany Achting storyline.

 

[OutInTheRain]

Ok I'm bumping this old thread because I have a question.
So of the Discworld books I read the only two that I found myself kind of bored with is Wyrd Sisters and Equal Rites. Is it just me or do other people here find the Witches books to not be as good as the other books?

The Witches books were always the weakest novels he wrote. The Watch novels are considered the best, where I think Men at Arms is the only kind of bad one.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

If you like Discworld I HIGHLY recommend the "MYTH Inc." series

They had a lot of potential but would have been vastly better if not written in the first person.

 

[Alabama Gamer]

Ok I'm bumping this old thread because I have a question.
So of the Discworld books I read the only two that I found myself kind of bored with is Wyrd Sisters and Equal Rites. Is it just me or do other people here find the Witches books to not be as good as the other books?

I like the later Witches books, but those two are kind of weak comparatively.

Since I've found this thread, where do you think the cutoff point where Pterry lost the plot is? I'd put it somewhere at around just after Going Postal. After that you've got Thud! and the whole thing with the "openly female" dwarves losing whatever shred of subtlety it had (and it didn't have much after The Fifth Elephant), and the whole "Guarding Dark" thing turning Sam Vimes into a stupid character.

Also, thinking back on it, the bit with the fundamentalist dwarves smacks of hypocrisy. You should embrace and accept immigrants with strange and incompatible cultures and anyone who disagrees is an evil bigot, but also you should do your best to stamp out their culture.

 

[glass_houses]

Ok I'm bumping this old thread because I have a question.
So of the Discworld books I read the only two that I found myself kind of bored with is Wyrd Sisters and Equal Rites. Is it just me or do other people here find the Witches books to not be as good as the other books?

I think his earlier works- the first ten or so- are weaker in general. Wyrd Sisters isn't going to do much for you unless you are a Bill Rattlestick fan, or else was forced to study Hamlet at knifepoint during high school. (I appreciate Bill a lot more now I'm older, but was it really necessary to make me study Romeo and Juliet for three separate years? Jesus.) Wyrd Sisters has actually grown on me the last few years, but it's taken quite a while. The thing is, the Witches books are based on fairy tale tropes and folklore, which are absolutely my thing. I like reading different versions of famous fairy tales, and analyses and history and such. Folklore, country superstitions, also a long running fascination. I didn't particularly like Masquerade until I finally saw Phantom of The Opera, and then quite a few things clicked for me. I've seen quite a few musicals in my life so I had a good idea what was going on, but POTO really helped.

The Watch books are generally based on noir detective tropes, not my thing. I enjoy them very much because dragons and Sir Terry, but if anyone else had written them, I might never have picked them up.

I don't think either of them is weaker than the other, I think it's really a matter of what your background interests are.

I like the later Witches books, but those two are kind of weak comparatively.

Since I've found this thread, where do you think the cutoff point where Pterry lost the plot is? I'd put it somewhere at around just after Going Postal. After that you've got Thud! and the whole thing with the "openly female" dwarves losing whatever shred of subtlety it had (and it didn't have much after The Fifth Elephant), and the whole "Guarding Dark" thing turning Sam Vimes into a stupid character.

Also, thinking back on it, the bit with the fundamentalist dwarves smacks of hypocrisy. You should embrace and accept immigrants with strange and incompatible cultures and anyone who disagrees is an evil bigot, but also you should do your best to stamp out their culture.

I didn't read the fundamentalist dwarves storyline as hypocritical at all. My interpretation is that the best of cultures meeting is in moderation; share some stuff, acknowledge that some stuff is private, meet in the middle, accept that you're both going to change... but fundamentalism, fanaticism and isolationism is dangerous and harmful to everyone, both believers and unbelievers. It's exactly the same point that Sir Terry made with Prince Cadram and 71-Hour-Ahmed in Jingo; just because someone is from a different culture with entirely different moral values, it doesn't mean that they are any less of an evil cunt... or any less honourable either.

As for Snuff, I sincerely loved parts of it, but a good amount made me go, "Ehhhhh..." the whole 'goblin messiah' thing really made me head desk. I did like the 'beauty in darkness' concept, but quite a bit of it was overdone. The Bennett sisters parody was hilarious. I really can't figure out why everyone is so over the top obsessed with Jane Austen.

 

[Alabama Gamer]

It's exactly the same point that Sir Terry made with Prince Cadram and 71-Hour-Ahmed in Jingo; just because someone is from a different culture with entirely different moral values, it doesn't mean that they are any less of an evil cunt... or any less honourable either.

Maybe it's just my interpretation, but I don't see the comparison at all. In my mind there's a weird disconnect between how it's handled in the earlier books and how it is in the later ones. There's a great quote in Feet of Clay that goes "Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk." I guess you could call the older Pterry outlook simultaneously racist and anti-racist. That's probably a really good summation of Sam Vimes's outlook as well. He hates minorities, but he also hates those who hate minorities. To put it another way, in Vimes's view, bigotry is when you hate minorities from a distance. It's when you look down on them.¹ Since Vimes has to deal with dwarves and trolls et al. on a daily basis, his hatred is fundamentally different. It's a lateral hatred. He despises minorities, but he despises them as equals.

In The Fifth Elephant, I see the message as very different. It has that weird parallax that IRL liberals project where the not!Muslims are simultaneously oppressed minorities who need to be protected from bigots at all costs and fundamentalist wackos who need to be stopped in order to protect the not!trannies.

1. With dwarves, this isn't difficult.

Unrelatedly, speaking of Feet of Clay, there's a quote in there that I've always thought perfectly encapsulates @Null's attitude towards jannies.

"Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you.”
“Sir?”
“It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority.”
“Sir?”
“That’s practically zen."

 

[IridiumDragon06]

I personally was a great fan of the Discworld books in the early-middle to Night Watch phase, but as of the Dwarf Gender Revolution, I started to feel a little leery. Like, knowing what I know was going down in Rotherham and elsewhere, when I read about the ethnic minority with their own neighborhoods, their own language, their high proclivity for violence and ethnic strife, with beards and many layers of clothing and foreign and concerning gender norms, and who demand that their business be handled underground, out of sight of their host country...yeah, I'm not thrilled, and I'm especially not thrilled with the happily-ever-after ending of Thud, or the general assumption that the dwarves will just liberalize and the icky conservatives will be discredited and fall away. It felt like the Discworld dwarves got made into being too much of a stand-in for real-world issues, and also not enough actually looking at that real-world issue.

For the serieses by protagonist, they are fairly different in tone, and characters can hop roles based on what books they are in, so if you don't like a given series (especially the first few books in it), then feel free to hop over to another.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Since I've found this thread, where do you think the cutoff point where Pterry lost the plot is?

When he started dividing main-line discworld books into chapters. I enjoyed almost all of his books after this started (I'm one of those strange people who actually greatly appreciated Raising Steam, flaws and all), but it was a very definite turning point. Making Money is when he started obviously losing track of plot threads (the forger-turned-designer was a plot that went essentially nowhere - though it was also, in hindsight, probably an unconscious examination of his own mental state) and Snuff is when almost all of his sparkle had disappeared.

 

[Betonhaus]

When he started dividing main-line discworld books into chapters. I enjoyed almost all of his books after this started (I'm one of those strange people who actually greatly appreciated Raising Steam, flaws and all), but it was a very definite turning point. Making Money is when he started obviously losing track of plot threads (the forger-turned-designer was a plot that went essentially nowhere - though it was also, in hindsight, probably an unconscious examination of his own mental state) and Snuff is when almost all of his sparkle had disappeared.

Then there was the Tiffaney Aching books, which seem to function as recognizing the end of an era and shifting to a new one - ending on Shepard's Crown where Granny Weatherwax passes on and Tiffany takes the mantle of unofficial-official leader that the witches don't have.

 

[OutInTheRain]

When he started dividing main-line discworld books into chapters. I enjoyed almost all of his books after this started (I'm one of those strange people who actually greatly appreciated Raising Steam, flaws and all), but it was a very definite turning point. Making Money is when he started obviously losing track of plot threads (the forger-turned-designer was a plot that went essentially nowhere - though it was also, in hindsight, probably an unconscious examination of his own mental state) and Snuff is when almost all of his sparkle had disappeared.

He was also putting out a ton of novels at that time, and even had some openly written with a co-writer, like the long earth. I think he started to get someone to ghost-write for him at that point. I started to find the prose of them to be much weaker, throughout most of the novels, with passages that reflected his old style popping up occasionally. I suspect he had his daughter help him with several books.

 

[glass_houses]

He was also putting out a ton of novels at that time, and even had some openly written with a co-writer, like the long earth. I think he started to get someone to ghost-write for him at that point. I started to find the prose of them to be much weaker, throughout most of the novels, with passages that reflected his old style popping up occasionally. I suspect he had his daughter help him with several books.

If memory serves, he had a long term 'assistant' that many speculated was more of a co-writer as Sir Terry's embuggerance progressed.

 

[Hucklejo]

The only witch books that are good are the Tiffany Aching ones, and they are hard carried by the Nac Mac Feegle.

 

[Betonhaus]

The only witch books that are good are the Tiffany Aching ones, and they are hard carried by the Nac Mac Feegle.

miniature Scottish drunks make everything better.

 

[Hector Hamsteak]

I think Moist Von Lipwig is my least favourite reoccurring Protagonist. I get that the plan was for the Vetinari to groom a council to replace him but Moist just seemed like a bit of an unlikeable cunt and threw the Vimes/Vetinari relationship askew.

 

[Prince Vegeta]

Then there was the Tiffaney Aching books, which seem to function as recognizing the end of an era and shifting to a new one - ending on Shepard's Crown where Granny Weatherwax passes on and Tiffany takes the mantle of unofficial-official leader that the witches don't have.

Sorry to wake up a sleeping thread again, but Granny passing on really got to me, and I was always a Watch fan, not caring about the Witches. After Night Watch I found the books tapering off, but Shepard's Crown gutpunched me.

 

[Sundae]

Witches Abroad is my favorite. I like adventure/road trip stories, and the dynamic between the three witches is great.