Discworld

Ahh, Discworld, how we do love thee. Let me count the ways...

For those of you unfamiliar, Discworld is a disc shaped planet floating through space held on the back on four elephants (there used to be 5, but you can read about that) who, in turn, are standing on the back of the gigantic Space Turtle, A'Tuin. Humor and Fantasy combine in the most eloquent and clever of ways. There's no other way to say it, Terry Pratchett is a genius.

The series, taking place on Discworld (of course), chronicles the stories of a variety of characters from the singularily inept wizard, Rincewind, to Lord Vetinari, who is truly the best tyrant in history, and even Death himself. Pratchett breathes in more than just life to his characters, he makes them so undeniably real in their own quirky ways. His characters have faults (usually faults galore), and yet they still manage to get by in the most hilarious of situations.

He parodies, he pokes fun at, he puns, he even gets the chance to laugh at himself during his books, and that's saying something as far as humor writers go. I've never been able to go more than 5 pages without cracking some sort of smile, and never more than 15 without laughing. Considering that over half the books are 400 pages or more, that's a lot of fun.

His books are stand-alones that also function in miniseries following individual characters. If you manage to read them chronologically for every character, more power to you, but it'll be hard to resist the temptation of the other books when you don't have the next in the series.

I won't spoil any more of the fun for you. Go out and get a Discworld book. Read it. If you've a funny bone in your body you'll read another one.

Recommended First in the Series: The Color of Magic followed by The Light Fantastic.

-[Tyr Zalo Hawk]

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