Pratchett is a genius, as usual, This man can do no wrong, He reminds me a lot of Douglas Adams, my favorite in the realm of satire, Look at this similarity:
"In the beginning the Universe was created, This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move, " Douglas Adams, sitelinkThe Restaurant at the End of the Universe
"Disc philosophers agree that the First Men, shortly after their creation, understandably lost their temper.
" Terry Pratchett, sitelinkThe Color of Magic
The Color of Magic tells the story of Rincewind, a cowardly fake wizard who happens to carry the most powerful spell in the Discworld in his mind.
Rincewind is tasked with protecting Twoflower, a naive but totally loaded insurance agent out on a tour of the world, who has more luck in one day than anyone should rightfully have their whole lives.
Joining the travelers is a multilegged, maneating, overprotective chest of luggage, The gods then play dice with their lives literally, Chaos and hilarity ensue.
My favorite character, indisputably the biggest BADASS of the book, was the Luggage, It follows Rincewind across the Disc and protects him from any threat, It also has the uncanny ability to convey emotions mostly menace without possessing any facial features, I'm eternally jealous of Twoflower for owning walking luggage I have to drag my possessions everywhere,
I love Terry Pratchett's ability to make fun of corruption, greed, cowardice, and other evils so common in the world without coming off as bitter or even very critical.
He creates characters with many faults but makes them lovable anyway Rincewind being the big example in this book,
Besides that, Pratchett is insanely skilled at writing simple but funny prose,
Some examples:
"The door flew open, badly damaging the assassin who was standing beside it, "
"He drew his sword and, with a smooth overarm throw, completely failed to hit the troll, "
"BelShamharoth screamed, a sound that started in the far ultrasonic and finished somewhere in Rincewind's bowels, "
I'm attempting a full Discworld series readthrough, one book per month, Check back in just over two years to see if I'm done yet xD Failed wizard Rincewind finds himself the unwilling guide to Two Flower, the Discworld's first tourist.
The idea behind thisbook arc sitelinkThe Colour of Magic and its sequel sitelinkThe Light Fantastic is commendable enough: present the reader with an enticing enlough world building, thus ensuring their interest in future books.
In practice though, things didn't quite work out that well,
There were way too many minor characters thrown in, all of whom came with considerable backstories, only to disappear a couple of pages later.
The mingling of both of science and fantasy elements got me all sorts of confused, rather than interested in the mechanics behind it all.
Some of the more promising oneliners got ruined by rather wordy phrases, And the overall writing style just screamed infodump through every one of its pores,
Whoever decided to cut a significant number of sidequests and characters from the TV adaptation, made an excellent judgement call,
The one unequivocally good thing I can say about the book, is the brilliant characterization, Every single character, be it main or secondary is wonderfully flawed, and thus endlessly amusing to watch,
Rincewind, the cowardly hero, chiefly out to save his own skin, was very relatable to me, moreso than any conventional Prince Charming type may ever be.
Two Flower, a tourist woefully unaware of his surroundings, is a veritable poster boy for all the horror stories one hears about tourist scams.
A number of side characters all with their extremely selfcentered view of the universe, out to kill Rincewind for one reason or another.
Last but not least, there's Death himself, who is unsuccessfully attempting to reap Rincewind, Reading about the Grim Reaper get more and more frustrated by his quarry's near death experiences, was definitely fun, although, I think I prefer movieDeath.
The latter proved to be much more intriguing in his amusement,
Score:./stars
As much as it pains me to say this, just watch the sitelinkTV adaptation, It has much better dialogue, screen play, and David Jason portrays Rincewind absolutely brilliantly,
Other stories featuring Rincewind the Wizard:
book: sitelinkThe Light Fantastic
book: sitelinkSourcery
book: sitelinkEric A fun book, but doesn't deliver as much as the later Discworld books
sitelinkCheck out my new youtube channel where I show my instant reactions to reading fantasy books seconds after I finish the book.
This was not my first discworld book I read, which is probably a good thing because I'm not sure I would have continued the series if it had been.
It's a good book, and very unique to fantasy in that it is a lighthearted comedy at heart, But it feels disjointed and is essentially a set of smaller stories without much of an overarching narrative,
Skip this book if you are new to Discworld, but you will have a good time if you are used to the world already and know what Discworld already offers.
I'm pretty sure people have told me about Pratchett and his Diskworld series before, usually working in the phrase "He's the Douglas Adams of fantasy" into the description.
But the problem was that I always felt that I had had enough of Adams after the third Hithiker's Guide to the Galaxy book, and whenever I scanned Pratchett's section in the bookstore I was immediately put off by not knowing where to start reading among the approximately five hundred thousand Diskworld books.
I'm glad I finally took the time to find out that these two books, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, jointly comprise the first tale in the series, and that they were definitely worth reading.
The Diskworld books are essentially satire of the high fantasy genre, or at least that's the foundation upon which everything else is built.
This pair of books follows the misadventures of Rincewind, a utterly inept and thoroughly cowardly wizard, and Twoflowers, a clueless traveler who happens to be in possession of both endless optimism and a magical suitcase that's always wandering off and messily devouring people who get in its way.
Things go from bad to worse for the two as divine powers both deliver them into and yank them out of all kinds of fantastic perils.
As someone who grew up reading plenty of this kind of thing and playing a lot of Dungeonsamp Dragons, I'm familiar enough with the genre and trappings that Pratchett lampoons.
Yes, there's the Conan parody, there's the Dragonriders of Pern tribute, there's the injoke about Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, But that's easy. The thing that made me almost immediately fall in love with these books is the author's dry wit and his ability to derive humor not only from the absurdity of the story and believe me, it gets plenty absurd but also from just good old fashioned turns of phrase, wry commentary, and jokes.
The guy just has an amazing ability to stuff five or six jokes into a single sentence, most of them making masterful use of that trusty standby of British humor, irony.
It's really smart and really funny, and the fact that it builds on the inherent silliness of the high fantasy genre is just icing.
I should also note how imaginative Pratchett is, which is a useful quality given his subject matter, He bounces his heroes from one generally horrible and dangerous situation to another at a frantic pace, and his ability to come up with new material and new situations amazes me.
And while many of them are obvious parodies of fantasy staples, just as many seem to be wholly new creations, As one small and obligatory example, the Diskworld itself is a flat coin of a world that rides atop four enormous elephants, who themselves ride on the back of a colossal turtle with two continentsized flippers that it uses to swim slowly through the cold reaches of space.
But at the same time, if I have one complaint about these first two books, it's that they're almost maniacal in their plotting.
While it's nice to see Pratchett's considerable imagination and humor on display as we go from situation to situation, the first book reads like an extended doodle with little plot and a whole "gods playing games with mortals" subtext that's entirely dropped in the next book.
There's also one Conan the Barbarian parody that's abruptly dropped in favor of another Conan the Barbarian parody who Pratchett apparently liked better.
It's not until the latter part of the second book does an overall plot come into play, but honestly I was enjoying myself so much I really didn't mind.
Expect to see lots more Discworld books reviewed here in the future, The Rincewind starts blowing up his ego in the first installment of the epic Discworld,
The establishment of one of the sub series of the Discworld, around Rincewind, sorcerers, and the Unseen University, deals with insurances, Hrun the barbarian, role playing games, living furniture, different fantasy stereotypes and their exaggerations, a tourist and the industry around
sightseeing, space travel, and introduces some elemental parts of the Discworld.
How the strange humanities, fringe sciences, real magic, and all the increments in university life should be interpreted is a subjective question of taste.
The academics can be seen as unworldly, snobby weirdos, absent minded geniuses, or, instead of plot elements, as profound criticism of too much general research in fields without any real benefit in stark contrast to the useful natural sciences.
Although magicians combine both.
Rincewind is a special person, one can see him as a tragic hero, manipulative and coward wannabe cynic, or someone with hidden potential, and he is used by Pratchett to contrast and reinforce the competence of other characters, especially the witches, who have everything he is unable or unwilling to achieve, competence, empathy, very strong powers, etc.
Hrun the barbarian, I laughed tears each time I encountered him in a novel, as he is the ultimate persiflage and exaggeration of any masculine warrior traits macho myth.
The elements dealing with insurances and how quickly creative ideas can turn a useful scheme in a destructive selfenforcing circle are more serious, something Pratchett did with many economic, political, and ideological topics.
In this case, it are just the end consumers who misunderstand a key element, but in other installments, Pratchett owns the whole production chain of bad ideas from mastermind to smallest consumer.
The tourism industry and how it changes both the minds of the visitors and the people living in a country, all the co dependences, and how culture, tradition, and art is instrumentalized to get more fancy bling bling is in the mix too.
Pratchett has the unique ability to multiply and combine everything others use a few times in an average comedic novel to a density that makes each page a treasure chest of witty dialogue, innuendos, slapstick, criticism, exaggerations, leading to close to permanent giggling and laughing.
Ive read nothing that comes close to him and Ive read many humoristic novels, Seriously, dont read these novels when you should be silent when hiding from trolls and blood elves, it will be your final chuckling, but a great one at least.
I could endlessly drivel about the ingenuity of this unique series that makes humans better beings just joking, all readers are great, but seriously, this kind of philosophizing and dripping deeper thoughts, objectivity, and awareness building in allegedly trivial fantasy novels with funny covers is something doing more for enlightenment and progressivism than political education and history lessons combined together.
Its just the first half of the one novel in two books first installment“ and continues with The Light Fantastic,
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
sitelink org/pmwiki/pmwiki. ph
This one is added to all Pratchettian reviews:
sitelink wikipedia. org/wiki/Scheibe
The idea of the dissected motifs rocks, highlighting the main real world inspirational elements of fiction and satire is something usually done with so called higher literature, but a much more interesting field in readable literature, as it offers the joy of reading, subtle criticism, and feeling smart all together.
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Seize Your Copy Colour Of Magic (Disc World, #1) Narrated By Terry Pratchett Released As Publication
Terry Pratchett