I haven't reviewed this because I read it so long ago that all I can remember is I loved it.

I'll take our very old and battered copy (bought in 1987) to the hospice this weekend when I go with Celyn and see if I can't refresh my memory.

RIP, Sir Terry.

'DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING,' said Death, 'JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.'


So - to the review!

I've just read this in slightly over 24 hours ... which is extraordinary for me. I normally take a month to read a book.

It is, to be fair, both a very readable and a very short book (65,000 words - a short fantasy these days is ~100,000 words).

I was surprised to find how much of this I remembered, especially as I last read it 28 years ago!

It's a very funny book with some GREAT one-liners. I particularly d one that said about men falling foul of the thieves' guild (I paraphrase) '... men who wouldn't be going home again ... unless they happened to live near the river and their corpses floated by on the way to the sea."

And this from the character Twoflower was poignant:

"When I think that I might die without seeing a hundredth of all there is to see it makes me feel," he paused, then added, "well, humble, I suppose. And very angry, of course."


Anyway - incompetent and cowardly failed wizard Rincewind falls in with Twoflower, the naive tourist with an impossibly optimistic attitude, oodles of gold, and an indestructible, vicious and implacable treasure chest on legs to defend him.

Hilarity ensues as Twoflower tries to see everything, Rincewind tries not to die, and the gods play games with them. We get a great tour of the Discworld, its geography, magics, and inhabitants, all of which are so fantastically imaginative and amusing that even geography becomes a joy.

This isn't Terry Pratchett's best book but it's full of all the great stuff that gathers together into its peak a few books into the series. It's certainly an excellent book though. Pratchett has an incredibly rare talent for compressing humour into one-liners that are witty, incisive, and yet never feel mean - it's not jokes that you feel are directed _at_ anyone, just mined from the stuff of life.

I had a great time revisiting this book and if you've not tried it - now's the time!



Join my Patreon
Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #prizes



..779 s David - proud Gleeman in Branwen's adventuring party212 486

Reading The Color of Magic is akin to eating an entire bowl of ice cream just a little too fast...sure, it may cause your head to hurt at times, but the sweet rewards make it all worth it!

Filled with ambitious wizards and ruthless assassins, the city of Ankh-Morpork has survived many dangers in the past, but now it faces an even more destructive force...TOURISM!!! When a rich but bored outsider named Twoflower decides to explore the city in search for adventure, it soon becomes an adventure for everyone around him, too! Twoflower's well-meaning but careless ways earn him the attention of pirates, dragonriders, and various supernatural entities, all looking to rid Twoflower of his treasure...not to mention his life! Soon failed wizard Rincewind reluctantly becomes Twoflower's guide, and as Twoflower explores more and more of Discworld looking for the adventure of a lifetime, Rincewind tries desperately to make sure his lifetime lasts for more than five minutes!

This was me for about 80% of this book...


Annnnnd here I am for the other 20%....


What I loved most about this book was definitely the humor. Some authors can only come up with a great laugh-out-loud moment once or twice in a book, but Pratchett is able to pull one off in just about every page! There are oodles of witty dialogue all throughout the novel, as well as some great slapstick moments. In addition, Pratchett gives us some excellent satire, too. I got a big kick out of how familiar some of Twoflower's ideas were, when he convinces a bar owner to "place a bet" on whether or not the bar will be damaged...Twoflower calls this process "inn-sewer-ants"! By having the other characters mock the "outrageous" concepts Twoflower introduces them to, it did a magnificent job painting an amusing picture of some of the absurdities of everyday life. "The Color of Magic" isn't just a humorous book, it actually manages to pull off several different kinds of humor!

Also, I was amazed with the extent of Pratchett's imagination! While some elements of this book are your standard fantasy archetypes, Pratchett really ups the ante by giving us some brilliantly creative concepts as well. With translucent dragons, trolls made out of water, a sentient piece of luggage that manages to display so much personality without ever saying a word, and an upside-down swordfight that has to be seen, errr, read to be believed, Pratchett never runs out of new ideas to entertain his audience with.

Alas, while I enjoyed this book very much, I did have a couple of issues with it. For one thing, I felt Pratchett tried to cram way too much into a book that's barely over 200 pages. So many characters and creatures come and go, it quickly becomes difficult to keep track of what's going on! I have some friends who didn't enjoy the "Game of Thrones" book as they found it confusing, but at least George R.R. Martin takes a good amount of time to establish all the characters, whereas this book can sometimes feel trying to watch a NASCAR race where all the cars are speeding in a different direction! Also, some of Pratchett's ideas were a little too "out-there" for me...I knew this was going to be a problem right away, when Pratchett begins the book by revealing that Discworld is a planet that is carried on the backs of four elephants who are all standing on the shell of a giant turtle that is floating through space...

"This is an awful lot to throw at me on page one, Mr. Pratchett!"

Also, while "The Color of Magic" works beautifully as a comedy, I'm afraid the actual story doesn't quite hit the mark. The book is divided into four parts, and each part feels a separate book. Almost anyone introduced in one section is absent in the other three, so we're left wondering what happened to many different characters. While the events of Rincewind's and Twoflower's journey are fun to watch, there's very little true progression or closure. This storytelling technique was especially baffling in the fourth segment, where Pratchett keeps referring to an adventure that we never got to see, as it occurred inbetween the third and fourth sections. This disjointed method of storytelling prevented the book from becoming anything more than just a comedy of errors, as amusing as those errors may have been.

So, while I felt this book would have been better if it were a bit longer and some of the concepts had been more fleshed out, I still had a lot of fun reading this hysterically funny adventure. I've been told that the first couple of books in the Discworld series pale in comparison to the later ones. Considering how entertaining "The Color of Magic" was, if this truly is one of the weaker entries, I can't wait to read more of the Discworld series!

2013-reads fantasy make-me-laugh338 s Melissa ? Dog/Wolf Lover ? Martin3,588 10.8k

Gah! I have a secret Santa that sent me about 21 books yesterday and I can get missing ones from my used bookstore. Ok, itÂ’s no secret but IÂ’m not calling them out
Autor del comentario:
=================================