Terry Pratchett's final Discworld novel races to No 1 in book charts

Terry Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna Pratchett has said that “somewhere Dad is raising a glass of brandy to you all” after the late author’s final novel The Shepherd’s Crown topped the UK’s book charts with a huge first-week sale.

Published on 27 August, the 41st Discworld title sold 52,846 copies in just three days in the UK, according to official book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan, more than double the number sold by the second-placed title, Jeffrey Archer’s Mightier Than the Sword. The chart-topping performance marks Pratchett’s 10th British No 1, said his publisher, and is “a fitting tribute to the beloved writer’s final Discworld novel”. It follows midnight launches for the title around the world.

“Thank you for getting The Shepherd’s Crown to #1. Somewhere Dad is raising a glass of brandy to you all,” Rhianna Pratchett tweeted on Wednesday evening. Pratchett’s own Twitter account, which he shared with his assistant Rob Wilkins, added: “Terry would have been so proud.”

The Shepherd’s Crown, which follows the adventures of the teenage witch Tiffany Aching, has won acclaim across the board from reviewers. “Nothing in Pratchett stays still and his inventive energy, book after book after book, is astounding,” wrote AS Byatt in the Guardian. “He made the world a better and livelier and more complicated place. We shall miss him. Very much.”

The Telegraph called the novel a “magnificent sign-off”, the Daily Mail described it as a “funny, fearless farewell”, and the Independent said it was “343 pages of high-octane literary enjoyment”.

Responding to a dismissal of Pratchett’s writing by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian, the eminent science fiction author Christopher Priest wrote that “of all the writers I have ever known, or the books I have ever read, Terry Pratchett’s seem to be a dead cert for long-term classic status”. The novels, he added, were “stylistically adept: good muscular prose, not mucked around with for effect (except sometimes!), enlivened by wit, sharp observation, a unique take on the world at large and whatever the subject of social satire might be for the time being, a brimming sense of fun and the ridiculous, and overall an approach to the reader that feels inclusive, a letting in on the joke, an amused welcome to the world he is writing about”.

Francesca Dow, managing director of The Shepherd’s Crown’s publisher Penguin Random House Children’s, called the novel “an incredibly special book” and said it was “a real privilege to share and celebrate Terry’s last work with his fans”.

“We cannot think of a more fitting way to honour the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett,” she added. Knighted in 2009, Pratchett died in March, aged 66, after being diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s, posterior cortical atrophy or PCA, in 2007.