How to read Discworld: reading order and where to start

Which Discworld book should you read first? Choose by sub-series, not by publication number. Discworld has five parallel storylines, and each begins with its own introductory book.

For a complete newcomer, the fastest entry is Guards! Guards!: a self-contained story with no need to know anything that came before.

You can find the complete chronological order of all 41 volumes in our detailed Discworld reading guide on the blog. Here, you'll learn exactly where to start and what adaptations Discworld has. Finally, we'll add a few words about its author.

Five sub-series and their first volumes

Pratchett wrote Discworld as five more or less independent storylines. Read in order within a single sub-series. You can jump between sub-series; they are only loosely connected by shared characters and locations.

• Rincewind – start with The Color of Magic. A parody of the fantasy genre where the tourist Twoflower discovers the Discworld.
• Witches of Lancre – start with Equal Rites. The first book featuring Granny Weatherwax, a battle for a woman's right to magic.
• Death – start with Mort. Death takes on an apprentice, resulting in the most human character in the entire saga.
• City Watch – the first volume is Guards! Guards!, a thriller about the watch and a dragon over the city.
• Tiffany Aching – start with The Wee Free Men. A YA series about a young witch and the blue Nac Mac Feegle pixies.

Not sure which of the five to choose? Guards! Guards! is recommended as a universal entry point by international fan communities as well. It is a standalone novel with no need to know previous volumes.

The main characters, Vimes and Carrot, also return in ten subsequent books. If you want a grotesque about death instead of a detective story, reach for Mort.

Discworld on screen and stage

Discworld has seen more adaptations than a reader might expect. However, not all of them mean the same thing as a "series based on a book".

Film and television. The most famous are two miniseries starring David Jason. The Color of Magic is from 2008, Going Postal from 2010. The television Hogfather was made earlier, in 2006. Even older are the animated films Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music, both from 1997.

The fan short film Troll Bridge from 2019 features the voice of the same David Jason. More interesting is The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, a book from 2001. In the official bibliography, it is the 28th volume of the series.

An animated film of the same name starring Hugh Laurie and Emilia Clarke was based on it. It premiered in November 2022 at the Manchester Animation Festival. It hit British cinemas a month later (source: Wikipedia).

A direct series based on the City Watch never happened. HBO Max only produced the loosely inspired series The Watch (2020), which mostly just took character names from the books.

Theater. There are over 20 theatrical adaptations of Discworld. Most of them were written by one person, Stephen Briggs. His first scripts, Wyrd Sisters and Mort, were created back in the mid-90s.

Briggs traditionally donates the royalties for the performance rights to the Orangutan Foundation (source: L-Space Web). It is the same foundation that Pratchett supported personally for a long time. A new stage adaptation of shorter texts was scheduled to premiere in 2025.

Collectibles for the books

Once you're hooked on Discworld, you'll reach beyond the books sooner or later. Character figures, an art book with illustrations by Paul Kidby, or a puzzle with a scene from Ankh-Morpork.

Terry Pratchett and his battle with illness

Terry Pratchett wrote 41 Discworld volumes in 32 years (source: terrypratchettbooks.com). In 2007, he was diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

He didn't stop writing. He switched to dictation and voice-controlled software, finishing other books with the help of an assistant. He passed away on March 12, 2015, at the age of 66.

You can find a detailed biography on our blog about Pratchett's non-Discworld books.

FAQ

You can find the entire Discworld book saga in one overview, including limited editions.