Thank you for posting this. I missed it the first time and only saw your post today. Really enjoyed it.
It's fucking incredible. I was (and am) a big Pratchett fan, especially his books around the early mid 2000's. He started off with a shit fantasy pisstake and then actually built a world around it. There's a story of him at a fantasy convention with other authors talking about cities full of elves and dwarfs and shit, and he asked where all the sewage went and who fed them. And that's how his books worked at their best. Satirical versions of real cities, warts and all, but with magical creatures playing different races, and all the real city organisation with went with it.
He's been accused of being guilty of literature. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but his best books are amazing, and his worst books are middling.
His biggest legacy, however, is how he approached his inevitable deteriorating condition, Alzheimer's. The speech written by him and read by Tony Robinson is heart-felt, beautiful, well-argued, and amazing. And whilst I love his books, in fact I've saved the last few up, instead of reading them straight away, knowing that there wouldn't be that many more, his stance on 'choosing when you've fucking well had enough and want to die' is fucking spot on.
“What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?”