I just finished reading the first book of the discworld series/saga/collection. Over time, I've read a couple of the discworld books, and I thought maybe it would be fun to start at the beginning.
Pratchett certainly has a gift for satirical comedy, and he plays with the fantasy genre in a fun way, but I think that I'm much more attached lately to the deeper storytelling kind of novels, and finding authors that write characters that engage me and pull me through a colorful and deeply realized alternate world. The Song of Ice and Fire books by George RR Martin are great for this. I also like R Scott Bakker's series, the name of which i can't remember. I recently finished 'Red Wolf Conspiracy' the first book by Robert VS Redick in a series/trilogy? with a bunch of adventure and intrigue aboard a ship ...
and i am now apparently listing books i've liked instead of writing something about pratchett's novel.
What's fun to me is how he turns the wacky mythology of a fantasy setting into something that is very real to the characters, and is an integral part of the story. Trying to make up a counter example, a fantasy book might take place on a world with two suns and four moons that square dance in the sky every 24 hours, but then the books are really about the interpersonal interactions of the characters, or the intrigue of competitors vying for a throne, or a small band of heroes slaying something and taking its booty. The story doesn't have anything to do with the fantastic setting. Colour of Magic does almost the opposite - focusing closely on what living in a world with magic means, from the eighth color, octarine, to the the way that gods directly interfere with mortals, the book is almost about looking (satirically) at the details of a fantasy world that might get glossed over somewhere else. The book starts with a description of the flat world atop elephants atop a'tuin the space turtle, and it ends with some of the characters flying off the edge of the world.
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