The Color of Magic
written by Terry Pratchett is the first novel set in the Discworld, a planet
like disc sat on the back of four Indian Elephants on the back of the Giant Space
Turtle A’Tuin, gender to be determined.
It was published in 1983 and can be likened to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but in the genre of
fantasy. I first heard of the Discworld
in a 2013 quiz bowl match at my high school, but would not pick up one of the
books until January 2015, when I read The
Color of Magic. I would continue
with the first two sequels The Light
Fantastic and Equal Rites,
planning to go in publication order until I got to the then final book Making Steam. This was until after I had finished Equal Rites when on March 12, 2015,
Terry Pratchett passed away after an eight-year battle with Alzheimer’s
disease. While I had no real emotional
connection to Pratchett, I stopped reading the Discworld novels and promptly
forgot to pick them back up again. It has
been three years since Pratchett’s death and after reading and enjoying Good Omens, I have decided to pick up
the Discworld and enjoy in its absurdity.
So I raided my local Barnes & Noble and over the past few months have
acquired the first six Discworld novels and am beginning today with The Color of Magic.
The oddness that comes
with The Color of Magic, and the novel’s
greatest weakness, is that it has no real plot.
Sure the book is put into a sequence of events and point A goes to point
B, but there is no point C for conclusion.
The novel reads like a collection of four short stories exploring little
adventures on the Disc that involve our two protagonists. The first is “The Color of Magic” where we
begin our tale in the twin cities of Ankh-Morpork as it is burning down. The Disc has had its first tourist, the
glasses wearing, insurance selling Twoflower, who is determined to see
everything the Disc has to offer. Sadly
he has brought with him mounds of gold and the Luggage, a suitcase like
creature which is sentient and hires wizard Rincewind as his guide. Hilarity ensues as Rincewind, being a wizard
who only knows one spell, is told to keep the man safe or else provoke a war, takes
his eyes off Twoflower when things go south.
A pub owner takes out a fire insurance policy, and then proceeds to burn
down his tavern to claim the money. The
city burns, Rincewind, Twoflower, and the Luggage escape, and the story is
over. It reads as extremely quick and
quick witted, with Rincewind being a complete coward through and through, while
Twoflower is naïve, and the Luggage is just plain weird. This story also introduces the concept of the
Disc which is already creative, and Death.
Death as presented here must take Rincewind’s soul personally as he is a
wizard, even if he failed at the Unseen University. Death pops up a few more times over these
four stories and is entertaining whenever the text begins to become a capital
font. “The Color of Magic” has the
problem of being a character piece without too much plot which is just fine for
the beginning of the novel, but leaves you with some desires for more. 7/10.
The second story in the
anthology is “The Sending of Eight” which is included to show how magic works
in this universe. The number eight must
never be said by a wizard and must never under any circumstances near a temple
of Bel-Shamharoth, the Soul Eater. The
plot of this one is that some gods of the Disc, mainly Fate and the Lady, have
been playing a boardgame controlling Rincewind and Twoflower. Fate is tempted, and Twoflower is naively wandered
to said temple while Rincewind is imprisoned by dryads, before meeting up with
Hrun the Barbarian in the temple. Hrun
mutters the word eight, which summons Bel-Shamharoth to kill them, but the camera
Twoflower brought allows them to escape and Hrun begins to travel with our
heroes. This story is most definitely
Rincewind’s story as we are introduced to his backstory and the significance of
8. In the Unseen University, there is a
book containing five plus three spells called the Octavo, and Rincewind, a
resident of room 7a, accidentally opened the book and one of the spells lodged
in his mind. It will not leave until
uttered or the death of Rincewind, and nobody knows which of the spells was
read. This and the idea of gods playing
a game with our characters is excellent, however, while it is the shortest of
the four stories, it is the weakest.
Hrun is a funny parody of your standard fantasy hero, and the imp in the
camera is a joy with his wit, but the plot itself is weak and the pacing is far
too off. 5/10.
“The Lure of the Wyrm” is
the penultimate, and by far, the best of the four stories. Our trio of heroes travel to the Wyrmberg, an
upside-down mountain. Here there be
dragons, as the old saying goes, but these dragons lie in the mind, coming into
existence in the vicinity of the mountain.
The inhabitants have a tradition where the new lord must kill the
previous lord, their father, and their siblings and the three children of the
dead lord cannot do it. Liessa, the daughter
of the previous lord, has poisoned her father, but she cannot seem to get her
brothers to die. She gets Hrun to do it
for her and they marry. Meanwhile, Rincewind
and Twoflower are captured, Twoflower thinks up a dragon whom he names
Ninereeds, and they escape. Twoflower
passes out due to lack of oxygen, Ninereeds disappears, and Rincewind magics
them to a passenger jet in the real world on the way to the United States of
America. Rincewind is a doctor of nuclear
physics and Twoflower is a tourist. The Luggage
appears and drags them back to the Discworld where they fall to the ocean. This is by far the best story of the novel as
it has a plot that grabs the reader, characters who are pretty well rounded (the
previous lord of Wyrmburg being a standout in the humor department), and is
only brought down by the odd ending.
9/10.
The Color of Magic ends
with “Close to the Edge” a story where Pratchett decides as he is setting these
books on a flat world, he must explore what that means to fall off. There are astrozoologists attempting to
determine the sex of Great A’Tuin in case he/she/it may be going off to mate. Our protagonists are found by a troll,
Tethis, on the Circumfence (get it) and are sadly sent to be sacrifices to
Fate, who has promised the Krullians that their mission will succeed if these
two are thrown off the edge of the Disc.
The Lady appears to them promising they will save them, Death is ready
to get Rincewind, and they are thrown off the edge. Death comes to meet Rincewind, who insists he
is not dead, and recognizes this figure not as Death, but Scrofula. As he feels cheated, (Death is dealing with a
plague at the moment and could not attend) Rincewind is allowed to live. This one feels more like it is set up for The Light Fantastic, it does not reach
the levels of enjoyment. I want to see
just where this is going, but for now it gets 6/10.
As this novel is more
like a short story anthology the score will come from an average of the four
main stories. The Color of Magic gets a score of 6.75/10.