Pratchett's books are not really about "wizards and dragons and shit", he uses his fantasy world as a way of writing about anything he wants to write about while carrying his readership with him. He hit his stride with Mort and there have been comparatively few duds since. The books are always to a lesser or greater degree satirical, and the jokes come thick and fast, sometimes groanworthy, sometimes clever, and not infrequently both; but Pratchett's real strength is as a storyteller - he makes you want to keep turning the pages (and not writing in chapters is I suspect a deliberate part of this).
