Mark Finishes ‘Discworld’ Q&A

Hi, friends. Let’s celebrate the end.

It’s been about three and a half years since I did my last Discworld Q&A, and at that point, I’d read 19 books in about two and a half years. This second “half” took longer, both by virtue of the Science books and the change in my schedule last year, but here we are. It’s been such an incredible journey for me. This is the longest single series I’ve ever done for Mark Reads, and I highly doubt I’ll ever top that. I mean… forty-seven books. (Because I also read The Amazing Maurice, Where’s My Cow, and the four Science of Discworld books.) There are many, many things I want to get to on my list, so I think I’ll spend a couple years bouncing around and not doing anything bigger than a trilogy for a while. So much to read!

More on that in a bit. These posts usually serve one chaotic function. I review books in a strange, drawn-out way, and this is how I can reflect on a series from a macro level, since it’s harder for my reviews to capture an overarching sense. But before we get to that, one of my lovely readers (hello, Stevonnie!!!) sent me what I believe is the most Kudos’d fic on Archive of Our Own to read. I’ve largely stayed away from Discworld fanfiction out of fear of spoiling myself, as I never could know if something—even a tiny something—would bias me against a future book. While I am fully expecting some recs below, I loved the chance to read a oneshot that is so damn clever that I cackled out loud when I reached the big twist. 

“Mister Vimes’d Go Spare!” by Lunik is written in a style that feels like Pratchett’s. Which is a hard thing to do in a fic; I don’t think fanfiction necessitates that anyway. Everything should be written in the style you want, and we certainly don’t have to imitate the original text. That being said: when someone does it well, it’s a treat. Sometimes, I want a fic that feels like it’s able to slip right into canon and not feel any different. This fic does that in two ways. On a sentence level, it’s a lot like Pratchett’s third-person style. But it’s the humor that really nails it. Especially because for like the first half of it, I wasn’t sure where this was going! It was all new characters (with tiny references to canon ones), and while it was cool to see what the Watch became, I didn’t quite get it.

And then I did, and it’s the kind of joke that Pratchett would play on his own characters. 

I kinda don’t want to talk about the twist openly because it makes this such a fun read, but suffice to say: YES. This was immensely pleasing, especially because OF COURSE VIMES WOULD HATE THIS… right up until he didn’t. And it captures the spirit of Vimes (ha!) in a really clever way. 

You should check it out.

So, below this post, let’s have our big Discworld free-for-all. It’s time to celebrate this multi-year journey ending! I’ll be around today and throughout the weekend (in between writing reviews and preparing the next Patreon commission post) answering questions and reflecting on this massive, massive body of work.

Starting on Monday is a journey through a NEW series: The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin! As a reminder, there are NO videos attached to reviews anymore, so this is just reviews only. I hope you’ll join me as I return to the writing of N.K. Jemisin!!! I’m so excited.

Thank you, Discworld friends, for over six years of conversations, conventions, discussions, and joy. I have no reservations about dedicating this much of my life to one body of work, and y’all have helped make that a reality. Please let me know what outstanding adaptations there are so I can begin to plot to do some Mark Watches stuff with them.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this ride.