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discworld

Fans dressed up and queued at midnight for Terry Pratchett's final book

He died in March after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

FANS OF LATE British author Terry Pratchett, many in science-fantasy costumes, queued outside bookshops overnight as the final instalment in the Discworld series went on sale Thursday.

The Shepherd’s Crown, the 41st in the saga, went on sale at 11pm in Britain and Commonwealth countries, and immediately received five-star reviews in today’s newspapers.

Midnight queue

Waterstones in central London was one of the shops to open on the stroke of midnight, and the author’s friend Rob Wilkins read an extract of the book to 200 ticket-holders.

Pratchett died in March aged 66 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease and his Discworld novels are some of the best-selling works in English fiction around the world.

The series is set on a flat world balanced on the back of four elephants who themselves stand on the shell of a giant turtle.

He wrote the first book in the series, The Colour of Magic, in the late 1960s although it was not published until 1983.

The Shepherd’s Crown book was completed last summer, before he succumbed to the final stages of his disease.

terry p 1 BBC BBC

“This isn’t just a great Discworld book, it’s extraordinary; a proper send-off for Pratchett and this mammoth series,” wrote the Daily Telegraph’s Kat Brown.

In this, his 41st Discworld novel, now his last, Pratchett gets his house in order beautifully.

“With his final Discworld tale, the late author continues his move away from pure fantasy and into moral and social exploration,” wrote Guardian reviewer A.S. Byatt.

“We shall miss him,” she added of Pratchett.

terry p 2 BBC BBC

“His loss is a persisting embuggerance,” she said, using a word he coined to describe his Alzheimer’s.

Pratchett, who sold more than 85 million books worldwide, was a fan of science fiction from his youth and wrote his first Discworld novel to make fun of the rival fantasy genre — but the target of his satire later came to define his work.

- © AFP, 2015

Read: Terry Pratchett’s final ‘Discworld’ book set to be published in September>

Read: Author Terry Pratchett has died at the age of 66>

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