Monstrous Regiment
In the twenty-eighth Discworld novel the Discworld goes to war.It began as a sudden strange fancy... Polly Perks had to become a boy in a hurry. Cutting off her hair and wearing trousers was easy. Learning to fart and belch in public and walk like an ape took more time... And now she's enlisted in the army, and searching for her lost brother.But there's a war on. There's always a war on. And Polly and her fellow recruits are suddenly in the thick of it, without any training, and the enemy is hunting them.All they have on their side is the most artful sergeant in the army and a vampire with a lust for coffee. Well... They have the Secret. And as they take the war to the heart of the enemy, they have to use all the resources of... the Monstrous Regiment.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
18mentions
17people
2008–2026years
50% recommend39% neutral11% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I always tell people to start with Guards! Guards! because I'm a huge City Watch fanboy. But depending on the person I might recommend Small Gods or Monstrous Regiment instead.
After reddit's hostility towards users became clear, I started reading Discworld books again. I think my all time favourite will always be Thud!
- I will seconds Guards! Guards! it's what I always suggest to friends as a starting point and it leads more naturally into a coherent series as you follow Vimes and the city watch - as an alternative the witches are quite hilarious especially if you're familiar with Shakespeare (a particularly good one here might be Lords and Ladies). The Lipwig books are also quite excellent featuring a lot of most folks favorite characters but I think they work better if you're familiar with the setting.
Lastly, I think a really good shout out is Monstrous Regiment which is absolutely hilarious, especially if you don't know the characters and just incredibly wholesome.
- Monstrous Regiment was my first one! It's nice as a standalone book and I think really shows off the compassionate satire that the essay is talking about
- Mr P lived up the road from here and his family still does. (Wilts/Soms:UK)
Pratchett came very dangerously close to writing serious literature. He also managed to write some of the most profound commentary on religion that I have ever seen. Try Small Gods for a rather unsubtle start.
If you want to do Pratchett then start at the beginning and work out - that's my advice. I was about 15 when the Colour of Magic came out and now I'm 52ish. There is also absolutely nothing wrong with randomly diving in but why not start at the beginning - no matter how daft it looks now? I actually rather like the first two books - naiive? yes!
Everyone has a favourite book because he attacked so many themes with alacrity. I see loads of calls for "read Monstrous Regiment" here - and it is an absolute belter. It is a very polite and beautifully handled feminist treatise with a hefty nod to the bloody nonsense that is civilisation in Europe.
"Small Gods" is not polite in any way and nor is "Winter Smith" - both are quite searing indictments on religion.
Anyway, Sir TP wrote stuff and it is rather good. I'm an engineer and the railway related stuff hits home even though I trained as a Civ Eng and now do IT! I shudder to think what would have been written by a Sir TP who understood say Python. We got Ant Hill Inside and the College of Inadvisably Applied Magic - we got off very lightly.
- > The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett (Kinda interesting, but rather odd)
This is the first book on Pratchett's Discworld. It definitely has a different tone than his later works. If you've not totally annoyed by it, or if you'd like to read fantasy which strongly mirrors our world, with a dry and playful humour, I'd recommend reading some later ones. They are quite independent of one another, so that you don't have to read them in order (although there's several sets with the same protagonists).
Personally, I'd always recommend Going Postal, maybe Night Watch (a bit of back story could help but is not necessary), or Monstrous Regiment.
- The main reason for that recommendation is that The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, though fun books and enjoyable fantasy parodies in themselves, are really not representative of what the later Discworld books were to become. When Terry wrote Equal Rites and Mort, he really set out his manifesto for the series as being about this world, reflected in that world, and that theme is what really carries forward.
So with the caveat that you need to understand those first two books aren't representative of what the series becomes, you could definitely start at the beginning. Just know that across so many books, there's bound to be some unevenness. Some books are just plain fun, others have deeper messages, some are, frankly, just not as good. Early highlights like Guards Guards, Pyramids, Small Gods, Wyrd Sisters are the ones where you'll discover the real breadth of what he does. Later books can be less consistently original, but when you get to books like The Truth, Night Watch and Monstrous Regiment, there are some real gems.
But don't let yourself not read any of them. That would be a real shame.
