Start Discworld with Guards! Guards!, Mort, Wyrd Sisters or Small Gods rather than the first novel, The Colour of Magic. Pick the entry point whose premise appeals most, read that sub-series in publication order, and branch into the others as you go. Apart from The Light Fantastic, which picks up straight after The Colour of Magic, each of the 41 novels stands on its own, so no book requires homework.
The Discworld novels appeared between 1983 and 2015, and the series works less like one long story than a set of overlapping runs built around recurring characters: the wizards, the witches, Death, the City Watch, Tiffany Aching and a city that keeps reinventing itself. This Discworld reading guide covers the best starting points, every book in publication order and the reading order for each sub-series.
Where to start with Discworld
These are the entry points that fan resources such as the L-Space wiki and reader guides commonly suggest. Each one works without any earlier book.
- Guards! Guards! (1989): A secret brotherhood summons a dragon to put a puppet king on the throne of Ankh-Morpork, and the only people in its way are the city’s neglected Night Watch and its alcoholic captain, Sam Vimes. It opens the eight-book City Watch run and suits readers who like crime fiction.
- Mort (1987): Death takes on a gangly teenage apprentice, who promptly makes a mess of the job. As the fourth novel, it suits readers who want to start early without starting at the very beginning.
- Wyrd Sisters (1988): Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick get tangled up in a royal murder in the small mountain kingdom of Lancre, in a plot that borrows freely from Shakespeare. Equal Rites comes first in the Witches line, but it has Granny Weatherwax without the rest of the trio, so many guides start here instead.
- Small Gods (1992): The Great God Om finds himself manifesting as a tortoise, with a single true believer left, the novice Brutha. A true standalone set earlier than most of the series, it is a clean test of whether Pratchett’s style works for you.
- Going Postal (2004): Con man Moist von Lipwig is offered a choice between the gallows and reviving Ankh-Morpork’s ailing post office. It suits readers who want the later, fast-modernizing city, and it opens the Moist von Lipwig trilogy.
- The Wee Free Men (2003): Young Tiffany Aching defends her home armed with a frying pan, her common sense and a clan of tiny, hard-drinking blue men called the Nac Mac Feegle. Written for younger readers, it opens a five-book series the publisher markets as an introduction to Discworld.
Why many readers skip The Colour of Magic
The Colour of Magic (1983) and its direct sequel, The Light Fantastic (1986), follow the inept wizard Rincewind and the naive tourist Twoflower through a string of sword-and-sorcery parodies. The first book is split into four linked stories rather than one plot, and its style differs noticeably from the later novels, which lean more on character and on satire of the real world.
Pratchett said as much himself. In the essay “Straight from the Heart, Via the Groin”, collected in A Slip of the Keyboard (2014), he wrote that he found it “rather embarrassing that people beginning the Discworld series start with The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic,” and added: “This is the author saying this, folks. Do not start at the beginning with Discworld.”
All Discworld books in order of publication
These are the 41 Discworld novels in the order they were first published, with the year each one came out.
- The Colour of Magic (1983)
- The Light Fantastic (1986)
- Equal Rites (1987)
- Mort (1987)
- Sourcery (1988)
- Wyrd Sisters (1988)
- Pyramids (1989)
- Guards! Guards! (1989)
- Eric (1990, illustrated)
- Moving Pictures (1990)
- Reaper Man (1991)
- Witches Abroad (1991)
- Small Gods (1992)
- Lords and Ladies (1992)
- Men at Arms (1993)
- Soul Music (1994)
- Interesting Times (1994)
- Maskerade (1995)
- Feet of Clay (1996)
- Hogfather (1996)
- Jingo (1997)
- The Last Continent (1998)
- Carpe Jugulum (1998)
- The Fifth Elephant (1999)
- The Truth (2000)
- Thief of Time (2001)
- The Last Hero (2001, illustrated)
- The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (2001)
- Night Watch (2002)
- The Wee Free Men (2003)
- Monstrous Regiment (2003)
- A Hat Full of Sky (2004)
- Going Postal (2004)
- Thud! (2005)
- Wintersmith (2006)
- Making Money (2007)
- Unseen Academicals (2009)
- I Shall Wear Midnight (2010)
- Snuff (2011)
- Raising Steam (2013)
- The Shepherd’s Crown (2015)
Discworld reading order by sub-series
No single sub-series list is universal. The groupings below follow the most common convention, used by Krzysztof Kietzman’s reading order chart on L-Space (which predates the last four novels) and by Goodreads, with notes where Transworld, the UK publisher, labels a book differently. Within each group, read in publication order.
Rincewind and the Wizards
Rincewind, a cowardly wizard with almost no magical ability, was the series’ first hero, forever running from adventures he wants no part of. Transworld calls seven of these “Wizards” novels, and the later entries shift the spotlight toward the faculty of Unseen University.
- The Colour of Magic (1983)
- The Light Fantastic (1986)
- Sourcery (1988)
- Eric (1990)
- Interesting Times (1994)
- The Last Continent (1998)
- The Last Hero (2001)
- Unseen Academicals (2009)
The Last Hero is an illustrated novel that sends Rincewind on a mission alongside Carrot of the City Watch, while Unseen Academicals centers on the wizards fielding a football (soccer) team and on four young people caught up in the match, rather than on Rincewind.
The Witches
Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, joined by the younger Magrat Garlick and later Agnes Nitt, keep order in Lancre with “headology” far more often than magic. The stories draw on folklore, fairy tales and Shakespeare.
- Equal Rites (1987)
- Wyrd Sisters (1988)
- Witches Abroad (1991)
- Lords and Ladies (1992)
- Maskerade (1995)
- Carpe Jugulum (1998)
Granny and Nanny also appear in the Tiffany Aching books, which the Kietzman chart treats as this line’s continuation.
Death
Death, the seven-foot skeleton whose dialogue is printed in small capitals, turns up in almost every novel, but these five put him at the center. His granddaughter, Susan Sto Helit, is a lead character in the last three.
- Mort (1987)
- Reaper Man (1991)
- Soul Music (1994)
- Hogfather (1996)
- Thief of Time (2001)
The City Watch
This run follows Sam Vimes as the Watch grows from a hopeless gang of three into a full police force. Most of the books work as police procedurals with a political edge.
- Guards! Guards! (1989)
- Men at Arms (1993)
- Feet of Clay (1996)
- Jingo (1997)
- The Fifth Elephant (1999)
- Night Watch (2002)
- Thud! (2005)
- Snuff (2011)
Night Watch sends Vimes back in time to his own early days on the force, so it lands hardest after the earlier Watch books.
Tiffany Aching
Aimed at young adults, these five follow Tiffany as she grows from a girl with a frying pan into a working witch, with the Nac Mac Feegle as her rowdy guardians.
- The Wee Free Men (2003)
- A Hat Full of Sky (2004)
- Wintersmith (2006)
- I Shall Wear Midnight (2010)
- The Shepherd’s Crown (2015)
The Industrial Revolution and Moist von Lipwig
Most of these books bring a new invention or institution to the Disc: moving pictures, a newspaper, a revived post office, a working bank and a railway. The last three star Moist von Lipwig and form a direct trilogy.
- Moving Pictures (1990)
- The Truth (2000)
- Monstrous Regiment (2003)
- Going Postal (2004)
- Making Money (2007)
- Raising Steam (2013)
This is the group where sources disagree most. Transworld’s book descriptions use the “Industrial Revolution” label only for the three Moist von Lipwig books and call Moving Pictures, The Truth and Monstrous Regiment standalones. Monstrous Regiment, in which Polly Perks disguises herself as a boy to join the army and find her brother, is set far from Ankh-Morpork, and Wikipedia groups it with Pyramids and Small Gods instead.
Ancient Civilizations and standalones
These books need no other Discworld novel and fit in at any point.
- Pyramids (1989)
- Small Gods (1992)
- The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (2001)
Pyramids follows Teppic, a newly trained assassin who becomes pharaoh of a small, penniless kingdom sooner than expected; it won the 1989 British Science Fiction Award. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, a children’s novel about a talking cat running a Pied Piper scam with a band of talking rats, won the 2001 Carnegie Medal and was adapted as the 2022 animated film The Amazing Maurice. The Kietzman chart and the Discworld Emporium file it with the Tiffany Aching books as a novel for younger readers.
Companion books and short stories
None are required, but they reward readers who know the world.
- Short stories: Pratchett’s Discworld short fiction, including “Troll Bridge”, “Theatre of Cruelty” and the witches story “The Sea and Little Fishes”, is collected in A Blink of the Screen (2012).
- The Science of Discworld: four books, published from 1999 to 2013 and written with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, that alternate a Discworld story starring the wizards with chapters of real science.
- Reference books: The Discworld Companion (1994), compiled with Stephen Briggs and most recently updated as The Ultimate Discworld Companion (2021), plus four illustrated “Mapps” such as The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (1993).
- In-world books: the illustrated children’s books Where’s My Cow? (2005) and The World of Poo (2012) are real editions of books that appear in Thud! and Snuff.
Do you need to read Discworld in order?
No. Transworld’s book descriptions say the novels “can be read in any order”, and apart from The Light Fantastic each book can be followed without the others. Order matters more inside a sub-series than across the whole series: characters age, get promoted, marry and change, and Ankh-Morpork keeps adding institutions that later books take for granted. Reading the City Watch books out of sequence costs some character development, rarely the plot.
A practical approach: start with one entry point, finish that sub-series or jump to another, and save the early Rincewind books for later. For another long fantasy shelf with its own starting-point debate, see the full Brandon Sanderson reading order.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Discworld book to start with?
Guards! Guards!, Mort, Wyrd Sisters and Small Gods are all common recommendations. Choose by taste: crime fiction for the City Watch, mortality and fate for Death, folklore and Shakespeare for the Witches, or religion and philosophy for Small Gods.
How many Discworld books are there?
There are 41 Discworld novels, published between 1983 and 2015. Short stories, four Science of Discworld books, maps, companions and children’s books sit alongside them, outside the main series.
Should you read The Colour of Magic first?
You can, but it is not the best introduction. Pratchett himself advised new readers not to start there. The first two books are also looser and more parody-driven than what followed, so they land better once you already like the series.
What is the last Discworld book?
The Shepherd’s Crown (2015), the fifth Tiffany Aching novel, is the final Discworld novel. Pratchett died on March 12, 2015, and the book was published that August. His daughter, Rhianna Pratchett, has said no further Discworld novels or unfinished work will be published.
Is Good Omens a Discworld book?
No. Good Omens (1990) is a standalone novel Pratchett co-wrote with Neil Gaiman, set on Earth rather than on the Disc. It shares his humor but none of the Discworld characters.
