The Light Fantastic (Discworld 2)
Aug. 30th, 2021 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishIn which the wizard Rincewind, accompanied by the tourist Twoflower, Cohen the Barbarian, and Twoflower’s Luggage, attempts to avert the destruction of the Discworld. (Spoiler alert for a thirty-five-year-old book: he succeeds.[1])
[1] As you might guess by the fact that there are at least thirty-nine more books. Though I suppose Pratchett could have gone the “Sledge Hammer” route: the first season of that show ended with a nuclear explosion in the city, so the second opened with a placard reading FIVE YEARS EARLIER...
Plotwise, TLF is a direct sequel to TCoM. That is, it picks up right where the previous left off, and adequately if frustratingly resolves the cliffhanger ending. TCoM was four episodes so loosely connected that I wonder idly if it was a fix-up of previously existing short stories. In contrast, the plot in TLF is mostly singular. There’s some flailing around with a talking forest, a gnome, and a gingerbread house early on, but then it settles down to (a pastiche of?) a typical fantasy novel where The World Is Ending.
And to be honest, it’s a pretty good example of the type. There’s an impending catastrophe (a growing red star, and the weakening of magic); there are people acting in all the ways that people do when faced with impending catastrophe. There’s Rincewind and company wandering around trying to do something useful, and there are a couple of big fights and a climactic magical scene at the end. I appreciate that there’s really no evil entity that Must Be Stopped; there’s just ... people being people, and the world being the world.
The plot works and works well. And Pratchett’s prose feels like, well, like Douglas Adams writing a fantasy novel on a good day. (Pratchett is far less misanthropic than Adams ever was; this is not a knock on Adams but it is a point in Pratchett’s favour.) I could read his writing all week, I expect, except that I am deliberately stopping to write this up.
But it’s the characters that really make the book shine. Which is a nice development from previous. Rincewind has developed an inner life beyond “coward,” making him a strong enough character to carry an actual plot. And towards the end Twoflower gets one of my favourite kind of scenes, where the clueless bumbling character grabs the protagonist by the lapels and makes an insightful and motivational speech. (“I’m here because I don’t know any better, but what about you?”)
Not to mention the minor characters. Cohen the aged barbarian, the silicon-based-life trolls in the mountains. The distinct ways all the old wizards are utterly ridiculous. Pratchett’s taken the opportunity of a novel-length story to dig in on character, and I appreciate that a lot.
(Endnote: My copy has a weird jump, from “Rincewind and Twoflower fly off on a broomstick” to “Rincewind finds some trolls while looking for onions.” There’s no mention of how Rincewind and Twoflower meet up with Cohen or why they appear to be traveling together.) (UPDATE: Per multiple plot summaries online I seem to be missing a moderate chunk of the book. Weird.)
[1] As you might guess by the fact that there are at least thirty-nine more books. Though I suppose Pratchett could have gone the “Sledge Hammer” route: the first season of that show ended with a nuclear explosion in the city, so the second opened with a placard reading FIVE YEARS EARLIER...
Plotwise, TLF is a direct sequel to TCoM. That is, it picks up right where the previous left off, and adequately if frustratingly resolves the cliffhanger ending. TCoM was four episodes so loosely connected that I wonder idly if it was a fix-up of previously existing short stories. In contrast, the plot in TLF is mostly singular. There’s some flailing around with a talking forest, a gnome, and a gingerbread house early on, but then it settles down to (a pastiche of?) a typical fantasy novel where The World Is Ending.
And to be honest, it’s a pretty good example of the type. There’s an impending catastrophe (a growing red star, and the weakening of magic); there are people acting in all the ways that people do when faced with impending catastrophe. There’s Rincewind and company wandering around trying to do something useful, and there are a couple of big fights and a climactic magical scene at the end. I appreciate that there’s really no evil entity that Must Be Stopped; there’s just ... people being people, and the world being the world.
The plot works and works well. And Pratchett’s prose feels like, well, like Douglas Adams writing a fantasy novel on a good day. (Pratchett is far less misanthropic than Adams ever was; this is not a knock on Adams but it is a point in Pratchett’s favour.) I could read his writing all week, I expect, except that I am deliberately stopping to write this up.
But it’s the characters that really make the book shine. Which is a nice development from previous. Rincewind has developed an inner life beyond “coward,” making him a strong enough character to carry an actual plot. And towards the end Twoflower gets one of my favourite kind of scenes, where the clueless bumbling character grabs the protagonist by the lapels and makes an insightful and motivational speech. (“I’m here because I don’t know any better, but what about you?”)
Not to mention the minor characters. Cohen the aged barbarian, the silicon-based-life trolls in the mountains. The distinct ways all the old wizards are utterly ridiculous. Pratchett’s taken the opportunity of a novel-length story to dig in on character, and I appreciate that a lot.
(Endnote: My copy has a weird jump, from “Rincewind and Twoflower fly off on a broomstick” to “Rincewind finds some trolls while looking for onions.” There’s no mention of how Rincewind and Twoflower meet up with Cohen or why they appear to be traveling together.) (UPDATE: Per multiple plot summaries online I seem to be missing a moderate chunk of the book. Weird.)
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Date: 2021-08-31 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-31 01:36 pm (UTC)