Terry Pratchett's Discworld 01- The Colour of Magic

Weighing in at a very hefty thirty-nine books and counting there's an admittedly decent chance that I might never finish this attempt to go through now-legendary comic fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, an ongoing collection of books that I fell for back in my early-to-middling teen years and have treasured ever since. It'd be fair to call this little vanity project of mine naivly quixotic, but there's a lot to write about and perhaps sheer stubbornness will get me through it. Also, Pratchett's richly imagined and often brilliant fantasy world has covered far more satirical ground than even the author could have ever initially imagined, and, more importantly, caused a serious stunt in my own social development as I was too busy reading the damn things to actually go out and meet people.

The Colour of Magic

Corgi

Terry Pratchett

1983

Other Terry Pratchett Reviews- The Colour of Magic - The Light Fantastic - Equal Rites - Mort - Sourcery - Wyrd Sisters - Pyramids - Guards! Guards! - Eric - Moving Pictures - Reaper Man - Witches Abroad - Small Gods - Lords and Ladies - Men At Arms - Soul Music - Interesting Times - Maskerade - Feet of Clay - Hogfather - Raising Steam - A Blink of the Screen - Sky1 Adaptations- Dodger - The Long Earth (w Stephen Baxter)

 "It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows."

Okay, first of all, to clarify; The Discworld is a large, flat world that rests on the shoulders of four gigantic elephants that themselves stand balanced on the humongous shell of a galactic space turtle, a turtle that swims through the vastness of space for reasons of its own. The major plot device, the explanation for this and for every strange, yet somehow satirically familiar oddity that Pratchett introduces here and in every other Discworld book is simply magic. The Disc is completely made up of magic, and so anything that people think can exist, does exist, and so the author can both invent whatever he wants and use any already established fantasy cliche he likes. The Colour of Magic is full of fantasy cliche's carefully plucked from their sources, turned upside down and shaken violently until fit for new purpose. Pratchett's respect for the original genre he infiltrates is clear and apparent in his fantastic imagination and the sheer scope of the ideas and landscapes he creates, whether humourous or not, and it's that which establishes this book as something distinguished and special rather than a simple parody of genre that's easy to make fun of.

The plot begins with the tale of the Disc's first ever tourist, a simple, innocent man named Twoflower hailing from the mysterious Agatean Empire (or as the reader recognizes it; China) arrives in the city of Ankh-Morpork (kind of a fantasy medieval London, soon to be the setting for many future Discworld books) and hires the infamous wizard named Rincewind as a tour guide. Infamous, by the way, because he can' do any magic and is an abject coward. General hi-jinks and excitement about the sheer amount of coinage Twoflower posses ensues, and the two lead characters quickly high-tail it out of the city on a Tolkien-esque odyssey around much of the Disc. It's a chaotic roller-coaster of a journey that jumps from one idea and setting to the next rather quickly, as the then-young author excitedly shows the reader as much as he can of his imaginative new world. Since the overlying main plot is almost entirety revealed in this book's sequel (The Light Fantastic) the majority of The Colour of Magic is disjointed, somewhat episodic fare.

The characters are great fun, generally built on the foundations of many a British sit-com creation by being far from heroic, wise or virtuous. Rincewind especially is cowardly, cynical and dishonest, but all of these traits are a survival tactic in a world he recognizes as insane. Still, despite the author's wonderful imagination the prose is obviously raw, written by an author trying to define his style, and who hasn't yet gained the skill of creating a more well-rounded tale from beginning to end.Furthermore, there's an abundance of action and pace that's sometime negative to the structure and character development, and with all of the rushing around there isn't enough focus on the hinted-at cataclysmic world-ending main plot, as Pratchett saves too much for his follow-up and gives an inconclusive cliff-hanger ending that seems rather sudden.

Ultimately, while The Colour of Magic represents a work in progress in regards to how Pratchett would later come to define his satirical style and widen his targets from fantasy and adventure cliches to practically everything the human race has to offer, it remains a favourite of mine thanks to the power and impact of its imaginative thrust, as Pratchett veers wildly from one idea to the next, never sticking to one for too long so it wears out its welcome, but instead rushing off to another. As a result he leaves behind fragments of an unexplored world with endless possibilities, taking the best from the genre that he satirizes by pushing the reader's imagination into overdrive regarding what might have been and what might be to come. Thankfully there's still quite a lot to come.