Apparently he started (the Discworld series at least) with the intention of doing a parody of all the really bad sword & sorcerer books that were being written after the Tolkien books got so popular lo these many years ago, when publishers were looking around trying to cash in on that with anything and everything they could find.
Personally I'd call him the greatest English-language satirest of our time, but I think that's something that developed over the years.
Most of his books could be considered fantasy just because of the setting. Create an imaginary world full of wizards and trolls and just about every other fantastical creature you can imagine - albeit with many a twist on the stereotypes so prevalent in the genre - and, voila, that's the category you get put in more often than not. But they are that and sooooo much more, I think.
And IMO they're also LOL funny. So much so for me that his dead-on commentaries on the human condition never drop on me like an anvil but tend to sneak up on me while I'm busy laughing. And like a lot of really great sci-fi/fantasy fiction, his books use the imaginary world and its "unreal" creatures to make some very sly observations about the real world of everyday human behavior. Chances are even his most "fantastical" characters and situations will start to ring very true the more you get to know them. You can read his books for the fantasy aspect, or just for a good laugh if they work for you that way, but there's a lot more there to be had as well.
My recommendation for anyone who wants to give him a try is to start somewhere at least a few books into the DW series. They are all pretty much stand-alone books, you don't have to read them in order to enjoy them, but most of the major characters appear throughout the series and there is a lot of character development which is fun to watch if you come in when it's just getting underway.
If you start with the first few books, well, to be honest I don't think he'd quite hit his stride yet as a writer and you can be a little more forgiving of that if you've already gotten hooked by reading some of the later books. Mind you, they're still worth reading and very entertaining, but IMO just not on the same level with what he starts to achieve a few volumes into the series.
Have you read any of Neil Gaiman's books? Not the graphic novels, but the "book" books, lol. He and Pratchett co-wrote a novel some years back which is quite good, called "Good Omens." Based on what I've read of Gaiman's, he's the closest comparison I could make although Gaiman seems to be a bit darker than Pratchett usually is. Pratchett gets into some pretty deep stuff but I find him far more lighthearted about it.
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