The Sword and Laser discussion

This is more for the folks who have read the whole series, or most of it.

I was hooked from book 1, but I feel like it really got its feet under it at Guards! Guards!, and Small Gods is an absolute treasure. Somewhere around Monstrous Regiment it starts getting self-referential, and around Unseen Academicals I started getting the impression that he was saying goodbye to everyone.

What about everyone else?

I think with Pratchett it's not so much when he gets good but when he gets good in the particular way that the reader likes. His style evolves a lot over time.

I think The Colour of Magic is good, but in a very particular way that won't appeal to a lot of people. After that, I think he struggles to decide what direction to go in and how to reinvent himself. Mort is definitely good; Pyramids is his first really good book, but again it's kind of divisive and not for everybody (it's still very silly, but it's also quite deep and serious - the combination isn't something everyone will like).

I'd say that everything from Moving Pictures on is really solid in terms of craft, other than his over-ambitious plotting (which never goes away).

In all honesty, however, I've re-read and reviewed the books up to The Fifth Elephant and I haven't found a bad book yet, though a couple have just been mediocre. In general, the quality improves up until around Small Gods and Lords and Ladies, then it drops a bit and becomes more uneven, and then I remember it gradually declining.

But it will depend on what you want from your books. Tentatively (i.e. I'm going to think about this more when I've completed my re-read), I think there are different Discworld eras corresponding to:
- TCOM
- TLF
- EQ through to Eric
- MP through to SG
- LL through to TFE
- The Truth through to MR
- Going Postal through to the end

Different people will prefer books from different eras, I think (and, of course, from different subseries). Personally, of the first 24 books my favourites would be Pyramids, Reaper Man, Small Gods, Lords and Ladies, Feet of Clay and The Fifth Elephant. I expect to add Night Watch from the later novels, but probably nothing else.

I have a soft spot for Pyramids and I thought Snuff was amazing, but in between there's a few I don't reread, more because I don't care for the characters than because I think they're not 'good' (Moist von Lipwig, I'm looking at you)!

I also thought there was a substantial change in the feel of his writing as he changed his writing methods to primarily dictation because of his "embuggerance".

I loved those early books when they first appeared but I re-read the whole series last year and they really haven't aged very well. For me, the 'mature Pratchett' starts around Wyrd Sisters. I'm not sure about a decline in quality in the later books because although I'm not overly fond of the Lipwig stuff, I thought the Tiffany Aching books were marvellous.