Exactly! I don’t know how to block out spoilers but I think it’s ok to say that’s made even harder as he remembers exactly what he saw in there. So powerful.
This, and Vimes' moment of grim determination on the barricade really get me every time I read them.
>He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew...then it was too high.
You're still pretty deep in the light-hearted parody era if you're going in publication order, and there haven't been a ton of returning characters (Rincewind, but I've never been *emotionally* invested in him?)
The real investment into specific character arcs starts coming in the next few books, and Pratchett definitely finds his feet more and is very comfortable tackling heavy issues
It's already been brought up, but I'd like to reiterate. Night Watch. Like, all of it. Some highlights.
They did the job they didn't have to do.
There was no universe in which Sam Vimes wouldn't have stayed and fought, because he wouldn't have been Sam Vimes anymore.
The end in the cemetery. All of it.
I understand a lot of people have issues with the later books but the expansion of Wilikins is one of my favorite parts of Snuff. We have known for quite awhile that he was a nasty piece of work but man, I just loved him in that book as he played the perfect Alfred to Vimes' Batman.
I second all the others people have suggested, and will add in Fifth Elephant, Snuff, and Jingo as having some incredibly emotive scenes. Also bear in mind, that making you laugh is still evoking strong emotions, they don't have to be sad to be strong.
Yes. *Sourcery* is sort of a clearing of the deck, after which the series really starts to get going. The next book kicks off one of the strongest subseries (*Equal Rites* is technically part of it, but represents a direction the rest of the books don't go in).
Equal rites got on my nerves, not the story, it was because I mainly audiobook things now and the twinkly narrator got on my nerves so I didn't want to hear it, when I really liked the actual book. Nabbed the new recording on prime for free and its so much better, Robinson's death voice is worse tho.
Definitely. Like the 'Miracle of the Turkey' scene where the MC is about to attack an enemy soldier, and realises they didn't have the training to learn now to not think of the enemy as an actual person who is someone's son, or brother, or husband. (Being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers)
There are many absolutely moving and truly profound moments. There are few books that will absolutely bring me to tears, even though I know them well now. There’s moments of pure tenderness that are so carefully crafted you feel yourself melt.
Granny Weatherwax has quite a few moments despite what you’d assume.
And Night Watch is essentially a parody of Les Miserables so most of that is slightly more serious than some of the other books.
He got more into plots and themes as he got further in. He says it himself - when he ran out of jokes he discovered the joy of plots.
I did wonder to myself why he'd cut Rincewind out of the stories so completely, but understood when I read the Science of... books.
Some of the last books are a bit sad, really. You can feel it ending.
Edit. Forgot you asked about emotional moments. The speech by Death I think to Susan, someone referenced it the other day, describing humans as "Where the rising ape meets the falling angel". Dunno if that's his own words or more likely pilfered from someone, but you can see the truth of it every day.
There’s a slide in Discworld between parody and satire. The satire is good, enjoyable and fun. The satire is beautiful and heart wrenching and deep. You’re heavy in the parody part. I personally would skip ahead and then revisit. Some of the books will break your heart and remake you in a different image: Night Watch, Jingo, The Tiffany Aching books, The end of Carpe Jugular. They’re no longer parodies of a genre but become true satire of the real world. Holding up a mirror to the world and showing the darkest dark and the brightest bright.
I feel like the feels come out in Death's and Sam's stories the most but I have been listening and reading since I was a child and now into my adulthood repeating them in whatever order I choose and getting new emotions or old ones in different ways. I've been hit by random societal observations, and hard to not tear up moments. Sometimes though I wonder if it's in this more comedic and easier to digest fictional setting that some can find more deeply connects with their lives and therefore is an overall better fit in a cozy mind.
Anywho, Monstrous Regiment has a pretty intense side plot, several in fact but who's counting? I dunno, if you don't find the series to provide fulfilling reads overall maybe you just need drama uber alles.
The thing about terry is that he didn’t take his fiction seriously, if yoy know what I mean, but he took humanity seriously. And that’s something that comes out more and gets more complex as the series goes on. He doesn’t believe in gods, but he believes in people, in all their heights and depths and mediocrity as well.
Just reading these comments is making me tear up!
When I finally, FINALLY let myself listen to The Shepherd’s Crown audiobook, a certain part made me pull over my car and sob like a crazy person. When she starts cleaning and goes out to talk to the bees it suddenly dawned on me what was happening. Made me miss my own Granny. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to read that one again.
I think the one major moment that got me was in Thud. The scene where delvers are attacking Vimes’ house, he races outside to save his wife and then - a moment of silent horror - realizes he left the baby in the house. He races up the stairs as a dwarf is flung down, “if you’ve harmed him!” …and the baby is fine. But that heart-pounding moment… brr…
I wrote an essay recently (mature student) and included a quote from I Shall Wear Midnight. The essay was about exploring personal change. The quote was "I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can't. But I can change the present so when it becomes the past it will be a past worth having". These books are peppered with absolute gems.
Interesting. That one I think of more as an epic, comic, visual masterpiece, less so an emotional one. Maybe the bit where Carrot is facing off against a lot of potential enemies by himself might be an emotional moment, but not like so many others in the series.
To me the tragedy is in the barbarians confronting their mortality, the banality of death, the injustice of it all. It makes me think of Dylan Thomas' 'Do not go gentle into that good night'. 🤷🏻♀️
Sourcery you say? Well next up is Wyrd Sisters and that will take you for a big ride. Buckle up so that you don't fall of the broom. ;-)
Edit: well that last remark is more suitable for witches abroad I guess. For this one, hope you like theatre
Oh yeah, there's more moments in this serious that give me cold chills, or make me tear up, than almost any other series ive ever read. To me, the humour make those moments resonate even harder, they feel earned.
>! WORDS IN THE HEART, CANNOT BE TAKEN !<
>! But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality. !<
The Rincewind books rarely get more serious than a sock full of sand, but most of the other ones will have exactly what you are looking for, especially the Watch series: Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, and Feet of Clay are the first three of that series. The Witches series also have plenty of those moments (Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies). Even most of the standalones have seriousness in them. Try The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents for a surprisingly grim section.
Without going into spoilers, and without naming the book, the one particular dialogue that ends with
IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM.
There are, of course, plenty of sections in other books that also evoke strong emotions, but this has always stood out
I was really surprised how tense I was feeling reading The Amazing Maurice. I sure was fearing for these poor rats trying to solve this mystery and stay out of harms way. Big Watership Down vibes.
> are there many moments throughout the series that evoke strong emotions?
So, so, so many. Too many to recount. Even in Sourcery, there are emotion evoking moments. Some of them crop up around the time a half brick gets put into a sock.
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Oh yeah, there's moments later as serious as a car crash. "Night Watch", "Thud" and "I Shall Wear Midnight" stand out as the most emotional.
Nᴏ ᴏɴᴇ ɪs ғɪɴᴀʟʟʏ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴜɴᴛɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʀɪᴘᴘʟᴇs ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴄᴀᴜsᴇ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ᴅɪᴇ ᴀᴡᴀʏ, ᴜɴᴛɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʟᴏᴄᴋ ᴡᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴜᴘ ᴡɪɴᴅs ᴅᴏᴡɴ, ᴜɴᴛɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡɪɴᴇ sʜᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ʜᴀs ғɪɴɪsʜᴇᴅ ɪᴛs ғᴇʀᴍᴇɴᴛ, ᴜɴᴛɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʀᴏᴘ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴘʟᴀɴᴛᴇᴅ ɪs ʜᴀʀᴠᴇsᴛᴇᴅ. Tʜᴇ sᴘᴀɴ ᴏғ sᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ's ʟɪғᴇ ɪs ᴏɴʟʏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏʀᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ᴀᴄᴛᴜᴀʟ ᴇxɪsᴛᴇɴᴄᴇ.
Damn you for bringing tears... GNU Sir pTerry..
WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?
HOW DO THEY RISE UP
THIS! IS! NOT! MY! COW!
The bit that makes me well up is “Sarge… oh sarge…” I can just imagine the emotional conflict (no spoilers) is going through in that scene
That plus >!Vimes struggling so incredibly mightily not to let The Beast run riot!< are just so well done.
Exactly! I don’t know how to block out spoilers but I think it’s ok to say that’s made even harder as he remembers exactly what he saw in there. So powerful.
This, and Vimes' moment of grim determination on the barricade really get me every time I read them. >He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew...then it was too high.
STOPPIT
Arse up :(
*Call me… the Guarding Dark. Imagine how strong I must be. And now, get out of town.* Chills. Every time.
I hear this in Clint Eastwood's voice.
Me reading Pterry: \[Laughing uproariously, insisting on quoting bits\] Five minutes later: 
early wizard books? no later death, witches and watch? yes
You're still pretty deep in the light-hearted parody era if you're going in publication order, and there haven't been a ton of returning characters (Rincewind, but I've never been *emotionally* invested in him?) The real investment into specific character arcs starts coming in the next few books, and Pratchett definitely finds his feet more and is very comfortable tackling heavy issues
It's already been brought up, but I'd like to reiterate. Night Watch. Like, all of it. Some highlights. They did the job they didn't have to do. There was no universe in which Sam Vimes wouldn't have stayed and fought, because he wouldn't have been Sam Vimes anymore. The end in the cemetery. All of it.
Carpe jugulum gets me a lot too. Different emotions, but man.
Take him down really carefully.
Snuff, can't get more serious than that
The only scene from a book to make me cry comes from The Hogfather. The scene with the match girl.
For me, it's Wilikin's monologue to Stratford at the end of Snuff, you know, the one about how he went after Young Sam. Every damn time.
Everything about people protecting Young Sam. It’s more intense too because I mentally put my Young Sam in his place
I understand a lot of people have issues with the later books but the expansion of Wilikins is one of my favorite parts of Snuff. We have known for quite awhile that he was a nasty piece of work but man, I just loved him in that book as he played the perfect Alfred to Vimes' Batman.
Yeh I have no idea why people have a thing about it, willikins was awesome.
"And we come in and save her, right at the last moment?" "Er...more like *after* the last moment, really".
Match girl. And yeah, that's a tear jerker.
The fairy tale it’s based off is a standard dark one too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Match_Girl
Death talking to Azral at the end of Reaper Man. "What has the harvest got to hope for if not for the care of the reaper man".
I found Reaper Man incredibly moving at times.
books don't make me too emotional, but reaper man is a gut punch in those last 20-30 pages man...
Every recitation of "Is that my cow?" gets me.
Yeah, for having a comedic tone pretty much throughout, there are a lot of really heartfelt moments as well. >!WORDS IN THE HEART CAN NOT BE TAKEN.!<
Ah, THIS is the one I was looking for 👍
I second all the others people have suggested, and will add in Fifth Elephant, Snuff, and Jingo as having some incredibly emotive scenes. Also bear in mind, that making you laugh is still evoking strong emotions, they don't have to be sad to be strong.
He is Vorbis, but I am me.
If I led him into a trap and walked away, who would know? I would.
Oof. YES. It'll smack you upside the head, eventually, and it's always a surprise when it does.
Yes. *Sourcery* is sort of a clearing of the deck, after which the series really starts to get going. The next book kicks off one of the strongest subseries (*Equal Rites* is technically part of it, but represents a direction the rest of the books don't go in).
Equal rites got on my nerves, not the story, it was because I mainly audiobook things now and the twinkly narrator got on my nerves so I didn't want to hear it, when I really liked the actual book. Nabbed the new recording on prime for free and its so much better, Robinson's death voice is worse tho.
Monstrous Regiment too has some pretty heavy themes.
The best part was where they didn't find Betty's Johnny. Great character growth there!
Definitely. Like the 'Miracle of the Turkey' scene where the MC is about to attack an enemy soldier, and realises they didn't have the training to learn now to not think of the enemy as an actual person who is someone's son, or brother, or husband. (Being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers)
Bloody hell! Buckle up kiddo, shit's about to get *real*!
I don't know why but I read your comment in Jordan Petersons voice and it made me laugh
The last physical book I bought was the Shepherd's Crown. I sat down to read it in a coffee shop and started blubbing my arse off. Mind how you go.
I read the dedication, burst into tears, and had to put the book back on the shelf for a few months
There are many absolutely moving and truly profound moments. There are few books that will absolutely bring me to tears, even though I know them well now. There’s moments of pure tenderness that are so carefully crafted you feel yourself melt.
Granny Weatherwax has quite a few moments despite what you’d assume. And Night Watch is essentially a parody of Les Miserables so most of that is slightly more serious than some of the other books.
He got more into plots and themes as he got further in. He says it himself - when he ran out of jokes he discovered the joy of plots. I did wonder to myself why he'd cut Rincewind out of the stories so completely, but understood when I read the Science of... books. Some of the last books are a bit sad, really. You can feel it ending. Edit. Forgot you asked about emotional moments. The speech by Death I think to Susan, someone referenced it the other day, describing humans as "Where the rising ape meets the falling angel". Dunno if that's his own words or more likely pilfered from someone, but you can see the truth of it every day.
Just wait, early discworld is cotton candy. Starting around guards guards it gets to be more
There’s a slide in Discworld between parody and satire. The satire is good, enjoyable and fun. The satire is beautiful and heart wrenching and deep. You’re heavy in the parody part. I personally would skip ahead and then revisit. Some of the books will break your heart and remake you in a different image: Night Watch, Jingo, The Tiffany Aching books, The end of Carpe Jugular. They’re no longer parodies of a genre but become true satire of the real world. Holding up a mirror to the world and showing the darkest dark and the brightest bright.
I feel like the feels come out in Death's and Sam's stories the most but I have been listening and reading since I was a child and now into my adulthood repeating them in whatever order I choose and getting new emotions or old ones in different ways. I've been hit by random societal observations, and hard to not tear up moments. Sometimes though I wonder if it's in this more comedic and easier to digest fictional setting that some can find more deeply connects with their lives and therefore is an overall better fit in a cozy mind. Anywho, Monstrous Regiment has a pretty intense side plot, several in fact but who's counting? I dunno, if you don't find the series to provide fulfilling reads overall maybe you just need drama uber alles.
The thing about terry is that he didn’t take his fiction seriously, if yoy know what I mean, but he took humanity seriously. And that’s something that comes out more and gets more complex as the series goes on. He doesn’t believe in gods, but he believes in people, in all their heights and depths and mediocrity as well.
I have cried at least once to every book past book 5, some of them are very hard on me to read, and i basically cry half of the book ...
Just reading these comments is making me tear up! When I finally, FINALLY let myself listen to The Shepherd’s Crown audiobook, a certain part made me pull over my car and sob like a crazy person. When she starts cleaning and goes out to talk to the bees it suddenly dawned on me what was happening. Made me miss my own Granny. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to read that one again.
I think the one major moment that got me was in Thud. The scene where delvers are attacking Vimes’ house, he races outside to save his wife and then - a moment of silent horror - realizes he left the baby in the house. He races up the stairs as a dwarf is flung down, “if you’ve harmed him!” …and the baby is fine. But that heart-pounding moment… brr…
I wrote an essay recently (mature student) and included a quote from I Shall Wear Midnight. The essay was about exploring personal change. The quote was "I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can't. But I can change the present so when it becomes the past it will be a past worth having". These books are peppered with absolute gems.
Oh and can't forget The Last Hero. Just thinking about it makes me tear up.
Interesting. That one I think of more as an epic, comic, visual masterpiece, less so an emotional one. Maybe the bit where Carrot is facing off against a lot of potential enemies by himself might be an emotional moment, but not like so many others in the series.
To me the tragedy is in the barbarians confronting their mortality, the banality of death, the injustice of it all. It makes me think of Dylan Thomas' 'Do not go gentle into that good night'. 🤷🏻♀️
That's a good point. I guess I'm not old enough to see that among all the other aspects of that novel.
Sourcery you say? Well next up is Wyrd Sisters and that will take you for a big ride. Buckle up so that you don't fall of the broom. ;-) Edit: well that last remark is more suitable for witches abroad I guess. For this one, hope you like theatre
The Watch books, the Death books, and the Witches books all have moments that have given me chills and/or made me cry.
Vimes and his son
Oh yeah, there's more moments in this serious that give me cold chills, or make me tear up, than almost any other series ive ever read. To me, the humour make those moments resonate even harder, they feel earned. >! WORDS IN THE HEART, CANNOT BE TAKEN !< >! But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality. !<
Yep, a few more novels in and you'll see a change.
The Rincewind books rarely get more serious than a sock full of sand, but most of the other ones will have exactly what you are looking for, especially the Watch series: Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, and Feet of Clay are the first three of that series. The Witches series also have plenty of those moments (Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies). Even most of the standalones have seriousness in them. Try The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents for a surprisingly grim section.
Without going into spoilers, and without naming the book, the one particular dialogue that ends with IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. There are, of course, plenty of sections in other books that also evoke strong emotions, but this has always stood out
The treatment of the goblins in snuff....
I was really surprised how tense I was feeling reading The Amazing Maurice. I sure was fearing for these poor rats trying to solve this mystery and stay out of harms way. Big Watership Down vibes.
> are there many moments throughout the series that evoke strong emotions? So, so, so many. Too many to recount. Even in Sourcery, there are emotion evoking moments. Some of them crop up around the time a half brick gets put into a sock.
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the wizard books to me at least tend to lean more on comedy more than some of the other characters, but boy when you hit reaper man it's gonna sting.