Book Review: The Turtle Moves! Discworld's Story Unauthorized by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Since the publication of The Colour of Magic 25 years ago, Terry Pratchett has been spinning tales of comedic fantasy set on Discworld. The realm sits as a disc on the back of four elephants who, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, swimming through space, and it gets more complex from there. Wizards are old nutters conjuring mayhem in their Unseen University, Death himself undergoes multiple identity-crises, great heroes tackle obstacles like getting the mail through and introducing rock and roll music. With ample tongue-in-cheek British humour full of silliness and awkwardness, Pratchett serves as the great champion (and arguably creator) of the sub-genre of comedy-fantasy.

Thirty-six novels (and three films, two of which are animated) have spun out onto Discworld. With such a massive background, it’s intimidating to think of where to get in on the fun of reading about it. Even for the seasoned Discworld-veterans, it’s hard to keep track of who did what where, when, and how. Fortunately, there are books about books, and Lawrence Watt-Evans’ The Turtle Moves: Discworld’s Story Unauthorized is there to fill any possible gaps.

Written in an approachable, chuckle-producing, almost blog-like manner (complete with parenthetical asides and winking footnotes), the book captures all one needs to get a grasp on the multitudinous novels in the Discworld series. It’s broken into parts, some giving summaries of Pratchett’s work while others provide commentary. First come the introductions, where Watt-Evans explains why everyone needs to read this book, and the overall commentaries on the founding of the series.

Next is a huge section detailing every novel. While each is given a few pages in description and summary (always enough to get an inkling of what happened, but never too much to ruin the story if you haven’t read it), there are three dozen of the things, and that’s a lot of fantasy ground to cover.

Article Author: Jeff Provine

Jeff Provine is an author, teacher, cartoonist, traveler, and plucky adventurer.

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