There exists in this world a particular species of reader—you know them at once by the gleam in their eye—who has wandered through the streets of Ankh-Morpork, taken tea with witches upon the Ramtops, and learned that the turtle moves. These are the devotees of Sir Terry Pratchett, and they face a curious predicament: having finished all forty-one Discworld novels, where might they venture next?
Fear not, dear reader, for I have assembled a collection of tales that possess that same ineffable quality—the wit that catches you unawares, the wisdom wrapped in absurdity, and characters who feel rather like old friends you simply haven’t met yet.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
If one were to describe Douglas Adams to someone who had never encountered his work (a tragedy of considerable proportion), one might say he wrote as though the universe itself had developed a rather dry sense of humour. In this magnificent tale, Arthur Dent—a thoroughly ordinary Englishman—discovers that Earth is to be demolished for a hyperspace bypass, and suddenly finds himself hitchhiking across the cosmos with a two-headed galactic president, a depressed robot, and the most useful book ever written.
The answer to life, the universe, and everything turns out to be forty-two, which tells you precisely what sort of book this is. Adams shares with Pratchett an extraordinary gift for making the profound feel silly and the silly feel profound, all while never letting you forget that towels are tremendously important.
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
Now here is a delicious premise: imagine a world where literature is taken so seriously that literary detectives exist to investigate crimes against books themselves. Thursday Next operates in an alternative 1985 England where the Crimean War has raged for over a century, dodos have been brought back from extinction as pets, and someone has kidnapped characters from Jane Eyre.
Fforde writes with the same gleeful abandonment of sensible boundaries that made Discworld such a joy. His pages overflow with clever wordplay, literary in-jokes, and a heroine who must literally enter the pages of a novel to save the day. One suspects Pratchett himself would have approved most heartily.
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
What if, one might wonder, magic existed in modern London, and the Metropolitan Police had a small department dedicated to supernatural crimes? Peter Grant is a young constable who, after a rather unexpected conversation with a ghost, finds himself apprenticed to the last wizard in England and investigating crimes that involve river goddesses, vengeful spirits, and things that go bump in the night.
Aaronovitch writes police procedurals dipped in magic and seasoned with wit. The series has been called “the perfect blend of CSI and Harry Potter,” though I might suggest it tastes rather more like Pratchett’s Night Watch novels transplanted to the banks of the Thames.
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
Here is something rather new and altogether charming: a fantasy novel in which no one is trying to save the world. Viv is an orc barbarian who has hung up her sword and decided to open the first coffee shop in a city that has never tasted the beverage. What follows is a gentle tale of found family, cinnamon rolls, and the radical notion that perhaps there’s more to life than violence.
This book has started what some call “cozy fantasy,” and it carries that warmth Pratchett brought to his quieter moments—when Sam Vimes goes home to Young Sam, or when Granny Weatherwax does what needs doing simply because it’s right. It is a hug of a book.
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Beneath the streets of London lies another city entirely—London Below, where the people forgotten by the world above have created something strange and wonderful and terrible. Richard Mayhew is an ordinary man who makes the mistake of showing kindness to a wounded woman, and for his trouble, he ceases to exist in the world he knew.
Gaiman weaves a tale that feels like wandering through a dream that keeps shifting under your feet. There are assassins named Croup and Vandemar, a Marquis who deals in favours, and an angel who may not be what he seems. It is dark where Pratchett was often light, but they share a London sensibility and a profound understanding that cities have souls.
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Fat Charlie Nancy has always found his father embarrassing—the sort of man who tells terrible jokes, flirts with waitresses, and once, memorably, brought home a lime-green suit. When his father dies, Charlie discovers that the old man was actually Anansi, the West African spider-god and trickster. And he had a brother.
Gaiman spins a tale of myth and family dysfunction that moves between London, Florida, and the stories that make us who we are. It is funny and strange and unexpectedly moving, much like sitting beside that one uncle at a family gathering who turns out to have lived rather more than you supposed.
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
Charlie Asher is a Beta Male—careful, cautious, the sort who checks twice before crossing the street. When his wife dies in childbirth, Charlie discovers he has been chosen to become a Death Merchant, responsible for collecting the souls of the departed. The souls, you see, attach themselves to objects, and Charlie must retrieve them before dark forces do.
Moore writes comedy with teeth in it. He is not quite like Pratchett—more American, more willing to venture into the profane—but he shares that gift for finding humanity in the most absurd circumstances. His San Francisco teems with the same mad energy as Ankh-Morpork.
Fool by Christopher Moore
“This is a bawdy tale,” Moore warns us at the outset, “herein you will find gratuitous shagging.” It is King Lear retold from the perspective of Pocket, the king’s fool, and it is precisely as irreverent as that sounds. Shakespeare’s tragedy becomes a comedy, though one must note that quite a lot of people still die—they simply do so more entertainingly.
Moore treats the classics the way Pratchett treated fairy tales and mythology: with tremendous affection and absolutely no reverence. The result is something that would make the Bard himself laugh, assuming he had a robust sense of humour about his work.
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
In the city of Camorr—a place that feels rather like Venice if Venice had been designed by someone with a wicked imagination—there exists a gang of confidence tricksters called the Gentleman Bastards. Locke Lamora is their leader, and he is very good at taking money from people who have far too much of it.
Lynch writes heist fiction dressed in fantasy clothing, and he writes it brilliantly. The banter crackles, the plots twist upon themselves like snakes, and beneath the comedy lies genuine peril. Fans of Pratchett’s Moist von Lipwig will find much to love here.
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Sophie Hatter is cursed by a witch and transformed into an old woman, which she finds rather liberating—old women, after all, can do and say as they please. She takes employment in the moving castle of the Wizard Howl, who is vain, dramatic, and possibly has no heart at all.
Diana Wynne Jones wrote with an imagination that seemed entirely boundless, and she treated magic with the same matter-of-fact practicality that Pratchett employed. Her work influenced countless writers, and her wit was sharper than most gave her credit for. This book sparkles.
Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin
Young Skeeve is studying to be a magician when his mentor is murdered, leaving him with an incomplete education and an unexpected companion: Aahz, a demon from another dimension who has lost his powers and is extremely grumpy about it. Together, they must stop a mad wizard, which would be easier if Skeeve knew more than one spell.
Asprin built his Myth Adventures series on puns, buddy comedy, and the gentle mockery of fantasy tropes. The books are light and quick and deeply silly in the best possible way. Every title is a pun (“Myth Conceptions,” “Myth Directions”), which tells you everything you need to know about their spirit.
A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony
In the land of Xanth—which bears a suspicious resemblance to Florida—every person possesses exactly one magical talent. Bink appears to have none, which means he faces exile to the dreadful mundane world. His quest to discover his talent takes him through a landscape where puns have become geography and everything means something else.
The Xanth novels are polarizing, I must tell you honestly. Some readers adore their wordplay; others find it excessive. But if you loved Pratchett’s fondness for taking a joke and running with it until it collapsed from exhaustion, you may find Anthony’s approach similarly entertaining.
Expecting Someone Taller by Tom Holt
Malcolm Fisher runs over a badger, which would be unfortunate in any circumstance. It becomes significantly more complicated when the badger turns out to be the last of the giants, who with his dying breath passes to Malcolm the Ring of the Nibelung and makes him master of the world.
Holt takes Norse mythology and British mundanity and smashes them together with considerable glee. He wrote more comic fantasy novels than most people realize—over a hundred books—and while he’s not quite Pratchett, he occupies neighboring territory with his own distinctive flag planted firmly in the ground.
The Portable Door by Tom Holt
Paul Carpenter takes a job at J.W. Wells & Co., a London firm whose business he cannot quite determine. The work is boring, his colleagues are odd, and strange things keep happening that everyone else seems to consider perfectly normal. Magic, it turns out, is mostly paperwork.
This series treats magic as a job—tedious, bureaucratic, and subject to office politics. Holt finds the comedy in making the extraordinary mundane, which is rather the opposite of Pratchett’s approach but arrives at similar destinations. The film adaptation appeared in 2023, though the books remain the definitive experience.
Finding Your Next Favourite
The truth about seeking books similar to Terry Pratchett is this: there isn’t another Pratchett. That voice—wise and angry and hilarious and humane all at once—belonged to him alone. But these authors have created their own marvellous things, and within their pages you may find new worlds to love as dearly as you loved Discworld.
Some will speak to you more than others. That is the nature of books and readers—we find what we need when we need it. But we must continue on, pick up something unfamiliar, and remember that the first Discworld novel we read was once unfamiliar too.
The turtle moves. So must we all.
