For the longest time I doubted that any book series would ever be as important to me as Tolkien’s legendarium. Then I discovered the Discworld in my high school library. At first I didn’t love it. Rincewind’s and Twoflower’s adventures in The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic were funny and entertaining but didn’t threaten to overthrow any of my established favourites. I liked them enough to keep reading though and after a few more books I was addicted, picking up gaps in my collection at charity shops and market stalls and Waterstones whenever I could.
The humour is great, yes. Pratchett’s puns and his dry wit are exactly my cup of tea. But there’s so much more to them than that. They’re wonderfully written. I have never once been bored or found myself wanting to skip pages when reading a Discworld book. His characters are some of the most complex and memorable I’ve come across. And, as a lot of other people have pointed out (including Neil Gaiman), there’s this very constructive sense of anger throughout that I’ve not seen anywhere see. It’s not hectoring or nihilistic at all, however. Through Discworld Pratchett looks at and calls out the ugliness in our own world but says that we, as human beings, are capable of doing better. It’s hopeful without being naïve.
Night Watch (which is where the glorious 25th of May comes from, in case anyone reading this isn’t aware) is one of the darker Discworld novels. It’s set earlier in the timeline than most of them, in an Ankh-Morpork under the rule of a sadistic tyrant, and while there are points of familiarity to me it felt like a very different place to the city I’d come to love. There’s a rebellion, which fails. There’s a group of men who aren’t heroes but they try to do the right thing, no matter how pointless it seems. And that’s important, the trying. The narrative values innocence and kindness and camaraderie, and that will always be meaningful to me than any ‘realistic’ or edgy, grimdark piece of fiction.
I don’t know, none of this is very original and other people have said the same things a lot more eloquently, but today I just felt compelled to try and say and something about what these books mean to me. GNU Terry Pratchett.