Where to Start With Discworld

Forty-one novels and no obvious front door. The honest answer is that you should not start at the beginning.

Nobody should start with The Colour of Magic.

It is the first book Terry Pratchett wrote and it is the worst advice anyone gives a new reader. It is a parody of fantasy novels that most people under fifty have never read, written before he had worked out what the series was for. People start there because it is number one, bounce off it, and conclude Discworld is not for them.

The series is really six or seven series running in parallel, and you pick the one that sounds like you.

The sub-series, roughly

The Watch books are police procedurals about a city. The Witches are about power and responsibility in a village. Death is about mortality, and is the funniest. Tiffany Aching is nominally for children and is nothing of the sort. Moist von Lipwig is about institutions. The Wizards are the weakest and are where most people wrongly begin.

Pick a strand, read it in its own order, and cross over when you want to.

The three usual front doors

Guards! Guards! if you like crime. Mort if you want the classic Pratchett voice at its cleanest. Small Gods if you would rather read one perfect standalone and decide afterwards.

There is a full breakdown of the Discworld reading order and how the strands interlock that is worth having open while you choose. Whichever you pick, you will not have spoiled anything: the books were written to be read out of sequence.

What actually happens if you get it wrong

Very little. A handful of jokes land differently and one or two deaths arrive without their setup. Set against reading forty-one books in the wrong mood, that is a small price. The only genuine mistake is starting with a book you are not enjoying and deciding the fault is yours.