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A common controversy in the Discdom is this - Do you go Rincewind, Luggage, all that, or do you go with the newer books? A lot of fans who started with CoM really disliked MR and most of the books afterwards. There are people who dislike the darker themes in the newer books. Personally, I started with the new books and have trouble reading the old ones. I get so angry at Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites - She just doesn't have the same 100% percent all-cylinders-firing, set-in-stone, don't-you-take-that-tone-with-me-Death-I'll-put-you-over-my-knee attitude. She's more essentially Female, with a capital eff. She's got the basics down, but I like her more later, when she's willing to stare down the sun.

Ooh, tough one...I own them all (the novels, not the Science of Discworld books), and am usually reading (at least) one at any given time. I enjoy them all, but if I had to choose, it would be the later books. There is so much material in the earlier books to build upon, and Night Watch and Thud rank among my favorites.

However, so do Soul Music, The Last Continent, and Witches Abroad...and the Rincewind of The Color of Magic seems to be pretty much constant wherever he is. There isn't a book that I haven't re-read a few times. They are all that good to me! And there aren't too many authors that I would be able to say that about....

And as far as darker themes go, you'd have to go farther back than that...Carpe Jugulum is in the same vein, and was written several books before Monstrous Regiment. (Lords & Ladies seems to me to tend towards the dark side as well...)

He's right. As a writer, I know that developing characters isn't as easy as people always think. Sure as Hell isn't as easy as I thought at first. If a writer says there isn't much more he can do to develop one of his own characters, I'd tend to go with it. Especially with a character such as Rincewind. He tends to add more of an...exploratory nature to the Disc, and thats what I like about seeing him. Having an explorer travel around the world finding new places and people is pretty bog standard these days. But a perennial coward? It's a novel idea. And because of the nature of Rincewind, he had to do much of the development pretty early on.

And dark themes suit dark, British humour. Being British, and since we have a reasonably dark sense of humour (there were quite a few dark jokes after the London tube bombings, many involving melting smarties in the tubes......maybe thats why they're hexagons now?), it's something that he can work with well, and most people worldwide appreciate dark humour. Thud! was very dark, but it was also very funny and very illuminating, as well as simply being a bloody good read. All of those work very well together

Seems like there's people arguing both sides here which is interesting. I have to say that even though there are elements, such as the luggage, that I really like from the older books the new ones are WAY above and beyond his earlier ones in terms of depth and content and so on. They're just way more intelligent and often much funnier because of that.

It's funny though how if you start at one end of your shelf and finish at the other end you can SEE his development and growth from book to book. Fantastic really, he must be some genius!

Why can you not have a serious story in a comical world? You can have comical stories in a serious world. Whats wrong with it the other way? There is only so much you can do when you just write for laughs all the time. He can do more with his stories, and with the talent he has, by making the books more complex, with cleverer twists and taking the characters into new and unexplored places

I think I'm with Chill, and casting a vote for the middle-of-the-road books. The older ones are relatively simple, and very dependent on fantasy, since the real-world satire creeps in more and more in the later books. I felt like everything from Guards! Guards! to Night Watch had a good balance of fantasy and serious themes, tending toward the fantastic.

CoM and the rest of the early series was funny, but mostly in a "Ha, I've played an RPG/read a fantasy novel, that's it EXACTLY" way, and the later ones are funny in a "Ha, I have to vote/feel responsible for global events/pay taxes, that's it EXACTLY" way.

Balance in all things, but I like the middle of the road. Reading for fun's always going to be kind of escapist for me, I don't need to be reminded of the real world and how unbalanced and untrustworthy everybody is ALL of the time. c:

I heart them all. The newer ones are written better because he's been writing longer, but the early ones are wonderful in their own way. I just read "Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature" last month and since then have been looking at a lot of his earlier writing in a different way. (I recommend TP: GoL to any fan who'd like to go deeper into literary analysis of PTerry's work.)