The Colour of Magic (Discworld 1)

[jazzfish]

Last things first: the only reason this does not end on a literal cliffhanger is that Rincewind loses his grip and falls off the world and THEN it ends.

So that's obnoxious. Luckily I have The Light Fantastic ready to hand.

This book is divided into four parts: a Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser pastiche; a Conan pastiche; a Pern pastiche; and one I don't recognise, about magical engineering. (I'm tempted to say "Recluce" but I haven't read any of those, nor do I know anything about them other than "magical engineering" and "thick paperbacks with Darrell K. Sweet covers".) Tying these episodes together are the hapless "wizard" Rincewind, the tourist Twoflower, and Twoflower's animate, sentient, homicidal Luggage.

There's a framing story of the Discworld gods playing a game that feels more akin to Magic Realm than Chess. Which makes sense to me: only a game of such complexity would hold their attention, and only divine beings could fully comprehend the enormity of the rules of Magic Realm. Honestly, the Lady may be my favourite part of the book.

Look, the book is mostly a send-up of other fantasy books. It does a fine job of doing that, and it's by no means a bad book, but ... it's slight. Pratchett doesn't put a whole lot of work into character development. Everyone gets a couple of traits: Twoflower oblivious and exploration-hungry, Rincewind cowardly and carrying around a mega-powerful spell in his head that prevents him from doing any other magic, etc etc. Nobody really gets developed beyond what's necessary for the scene to work.

The explicit Discworld world-building comes off weird to me as well. Death is just so petty in his pursuit of Rincewind. The as-yet-nameless Patrician shows very little sign of being a powerful behind-the-scenes manipulator; he's just a cruel tyrant. I don't know whether Ankh-Morpork feels like itself or not, since it burns down in the first story and doesn't recur. Weird.

And yet. The whole Discworld concept, and the bits of history and other background worldbuilding that Pratchett gives us, provide glimpses of the depth that I expect to come. And while the prose is mostly serviceable-funny, there's still occasional bits of what I think of as fundamentally Pratchettian ... wisdom, maybe.

"We don't have gods where I come from, " said Twoflower.
"You do, you know," said the Lady. "Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods."

That kind of thing. That, I think, is why people read Pratchett? It's certainly part of why I do.

Next up: The Light Fantastic. More Rincewind and (I assume) Twoflower and the Luggage. I wonder if it will be more parodies or turn into its own thing.

Comments

[jessie_c]

*wizzard.

[jazzfish]

Hm. A text search in my ten-book ebook edition indicates that the double-zed spelling turns up a couple times in Equal Rites and a few more in Sourcery et seq, and it's all "wizard" otherwise. Might be a weirdness of the ebook, or a UK-vs-US thing.

[jessie_c]

It's more specific than that. Rincewind spells it wizzard. None of the other wizards do. It's an identifying trait; he even has it in sequins on his hat just so everyone knows.
Chalk it up to the discworld's robust and idiosyncratic approach to spelling (And wait until you get to Carrot and his comma abuse).

[culfinriel]

I feel like it's very obvious that this was the first of his books in this world and the first published execution of these satirical ideas. For that, it seems like it went pretty well. I think it definitely evolves over time.

[jessie_c]

Not quite the first, but it's definitely one of his early ones, and the first to pastiche fantasy tropes. Carpet People, Dark Side of the Sun, and Strata predate the Discworld books.