The Discworldseries evolved over the course of thirty-two years and forty-one books and the first two or three novels don’t really reflect the complexity of the later books – the first two especially are rather broad spoofs of a certain type of swords ‘n’ sorcery fantasy that was popular in the 1980s. However, if you ask a Discworld fan where to start reading, the differing responses you get will not often involve the very first novel, The Colour Of Magic. If you haven’t read the Discworld series, you might be thinking this is sure to be a pretty short article, if the whole series follows a simple chronological order. Overall, however, the books more or less follow the chronological order in which they were written and published. There’s also a substantial time skip in Wyrd Sisters, and Thief Of Time, unsurprisingly, does peculiar things with the timeline, noting that it seemed to be fractured.

For the most part, each novel takes place chronologically following the one before, with the possible exception of Small Gods (exactly when Small Gods takes place is debatable, but there are a few indications that it may take place substantially earlier than the other novels). Of course, most people’s first instinct is to read a series of books in the order in which they were released – we won’t list all forty-one books in publication order here, but you can easily find such lists on multiple websites.

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