Phase One

So the chronological Discworld project has been going just over a month, and I’ve read up to Eric, which is the 9th novel. I’m taking a short break for three important reasons: (1) to write up the last few, which I haven’t blogged about yet (one gets behind), (2) to mail order the next batch of books, which I don’t own, and (3) because variety is the spice of life, and I need to read something other that Pratchett for a second (David Shields’s Reality Hunger, if you must know).

I wondered if it would be possible to overdo Pratchett, like cramming one’s face with haribo, at the start of the project. The answer is that whilst the books are varied enough to stay exciting, certain similarities between them which you’d miss with more space between readings are becoming harder for me to ignore. One particularly grating example was that both Wyrd Sisters and Pyramids have dead kings who have to stay around as ghosts in order to watch their sons inherit the kingdom, and aren’t happy about it. Pratchett goes somewhere very different with this character the second time, of course – but it is the second time.

On the other hand, especially with the arrival of the first Watch book, there’s a real feeling of the Discworld taking wing, and I feel that this concern will retreat (or, at least, be replaced with a different one) as early/80s Discworld gives way to “mid”/90s Discworld. It’s still on, basically.

Sourcery

I had this one down in my head as a very slightly inferior example of the species, and although there are some lovely bits in it which I hadn’t remembered, this re-read hasn’t done much to alter my prejudices. It seems impossible that it was written after Mort – it feels far ‘earlier’, the Discworld is so much cruder, more reliant on the trappings of fantasy. There is one good thing about it, though – Coin’s ‘re-write’ of reality at the end of this novel could, I imagine, be used for an in-universe explanation for the contradictions between the way the world (and, in particular, magic) seems to operate in the books before this one and the books after.

This novel feels like an attempt – after the breakaway of Mort and, to a lesser extent, Equal Rites – to write The Colour of Magic again. Perhaps Rincewind books all share this tendency to be more fantastical, which might be why a lot of my friends like them less than the others. Personally, I don’t mind Rincewind or adventure per se (Eric, which we’re coming to soon, is a particular favourite of mine) but for some reason, this one sticks in the throat. It might be the mix between Pratchett’s very subtle and down-to-earth beliefs about the uses of magic and his portrayal of all-out magical warfare: the idea of Ankh, Quirm, Al Khali and so on being casually destroyed is not one we like in such a carefully constructed world, even though he puts them back. This tension is also there on the character level – the librarian is the fully-nuanced arbiter of moral rightness and physical power that he represents throughout nearly the entire series, whilst the Patrician feels unbelievably underdeveloped  (this is the first book in which he’s named).

Also detectable here are the first hints of the ‘world and mirror of worlds’ aspect of the Disc, which really start gathering themselves in Wyrd Sisters (next). This is played purely for laughs – the genie-in-the-lamp who’s an eighties business networking executive – and again, it feels clumsy compared to the later masterpieces of Moving Pictures or Soul Music. There’s stuff to recognise and like here too, though. Rincewind’s final selection of half a brick in a sock as his weapon against the most potent magic-wielder in the world brings a smile of recognition to a Pratchett-reader of any era. And of course, there’s the snake pit. I like the snake pit.

Mort

I always thought of this as the moment in which we really start recognising the Discworld of the later books – for a start, the rules it establishes are ones which Pratchett more or less sticks to from here on (he plays a little looser with those established in The Colour of Magic). But it’s also the kind of story we get used to later, the never-quite-romantic adventure in which duty and morality seem brought into conflict.

Mainly, though, Death is cool. Isn’t he cool? Giving him his own book this early must have felt like a bit of a risk, but the result is entirely wonderful, and the performance is not just more earnest than in the previous Discworlds but it’s also tighter, more superbly controlled.  Mort has a leanness that you don’t see in earlier novels (and some of the later ones); like Equal Rites, it loosely fits the bildungsroman model, but in contrast it feels altogether more deliberate, more final, more positioned towards its ending.

Reading the books in order, though, one sees connections backwards as well as forwards. Binky, seen at first, is just another of the wild and amusing concepts which Pratchett tosses out so lightheartedly in the first two novels. Reading them systematically, you realise that Binky only seems more stabilised, more ‘real Discworld’ than, say,  Bel-Shamharoth, because Pratchett stuck with him. So there’s evidence of settling down here, but also the evidence of the artificiality of that impression, seen from behind.

A great novel.

Equal Rites

Granny without Nanny. It seems almost impossible now, doesn’t it? This book sets up a very slightly different model for the Discworld witches from Wyrd Sisters, the first ‘real’ Witches book  – but it’s no less brilliant for that, and it’s also of course the moment that Discworld breaks away from Rincewind, the moment that it becomes clear that the world alone, more than any of its individual characters, can support a story.

In one sense, though, this book follows The Light Fantastic quite closely – the threat is once again from the mysterious creatures of the Dungeon Dimensions. These Lovecraftian horrors are a big presence in the earlier books, playing an important role certainly as late as Moving Pictures, although by Soul Music they’re just ‘what rock music is mistaken for’ as the Disc modernises. They represent a threat to the whole world, not just the protagonists of a given story, and in that sense they feel primitive (see my Light Fantastic post) but I also think they’re important for what they represent: the destructive potential of unregulated, unimaginative imagination on a coherently-imagined world.

I think Esk is a great character, and it’s a shame we don’t see her again. There’s also great subtlety in the idea which Pratchett leads both Esk and Simon to arrive at from their very different starting places – that idea of magic beyond magic, of magic being more powerful when not used. It’s a shame this isn’t dwelt on more, for I feel, reading this, like Pratchett has a bigger idea than he’s letting on.

This also links back to Rincewind, the Wizard who wishes he was a scientist, and is developed a little when he returns in Sourcery. The enduring shame is that the Unseen University which we see at the start of that book is as closed to women as at the start of Equal Rites, showing that the progress hinted at by this novel’s conclusion never materialises. That’s one reason not to read the Discworld in order – but taken by itself, there’s lots to love about Equal Rites – the inception of headology, the sight of Granny in Ankh, and, of course, the first scene with a jump-started broomstick.