I’ve read a number of books in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and have enjoyed them to varying degrees (my favourite so far is probably Soul Music). It’s a 41-book comedic fantasy series that’s really more of a collection of subseries and standalone novels set in a shared world. Traditional wisdom is that it’s actually not recommended to start at the beginning as the first few books aren’t a good representation of the overall quality of the work (my personal recommendation for starting is the fourth book, Mort, or the eighth book, Guards! Guards!). I’m a bit of a completionist, and needed my curiosity satisfied, so I recently went back to read the first two books of the series (which are also the first two books focusing on the wizards’ sub-series within the world), The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, published in 1983 and 1986, respectively.
The books follow Rincewind, a failed wizard and semi-reluctant tour guide, and Twoflower, the Disc’s first tourist. There isn’t really much of a plot, it’s sort of a series of events as Twoflower wants to have typical tourist experiences, and Rincewind wants to keep him (and his sentient and somewhat alarming Luggage) out of trouble.
About halfway through The Colour of Magic, I came to the conclusion that traditional wisdom is probably right on this one. There are hints of the greatness to come—several of the one liners made me giggle—but the overall story is kind of a mess. These are partially a parody of other works of fantasy, but as the first book was written 6 years before I was born and I don’t have a great knowledge of other media from that time, I think a lot of the references went over my head. It was good to see the origins of some of the characters that later have expanded roles though, including the cause of the Librarian’s particular affliction.
Is it worth reading? If you haven’t read any of the other Discworld novels, definitely not. If you have, and are a completionist or want to see the origins of the world, characters, and writing that become much more engaging in later books, maybe?