The Color of Magic

Because of Kirchinger’s Principle of Choosing Fiction #1 (There are more good books than you can read in a lifetime. Therefore life is too short to read mediocre books.) I sometime choose not to complete a book I have started. I stopped reading The Color of Magic (1983). Twice


I can’t explain why I started again, either time. The first time I put it down after reading about a third of it, and I put it down for nearly a year. No one told me to pick it up again. I’m in my 40’s, so I don’t read on assignment. I’m a medical doctor, so reading fantasy is not required in my profession. I had no friends or relatives raving about the book, other than when I first picked it up, my sister had told me she thought it was hilarious. But she did not stand behind me all those months of non-reading, telling me to “pick it up. Read it Dave. Pick it up Dave.” She didn’t know I had tried and put it down, and I doubt she would have cared.

Yet there was something curiously drawing me back to The Color of Magic. I picked it up again, and gave up on it even sooner the second time.

Oddly, the nagging voice inside my read telling me I have to read it became stronger this time. Before, it was just an occasional stray thought that could have been brushed aside as flatulence or allergies, but now it was an extra voice in my head telling me to read The Color of Magic. A couple month later, I was sick of the voice. I picked up the book, and I did not put it down until I finished it.

Wow. I’ve never had an experience with a book like that. I’ve never been haunted by a book that I chose not to finish, and I have rarely read one from cover to cover in one setting.

WARNING

Discworld is mind twisting and addictive.

If you like fantasy, humor, and forcing your mind to think in new ways, I highly recommend the Discworld series. It is one of the best there is. The Color of Magic is the first book of the The Discworld Series

The Color of Magic is harder to follow than any of the others. The Color of Magic is book one, and The Light Fantastic is book 2. Terry Pratchett says that none of the books have to be read in any particular order. I’ve read half the series, and I agree with Pratchett…except for the first two books. The Light Fantastic makes much more sense if you’ve read The Color of Magic first. I would also say that the entire series is much easier to understand if you read those two first. After that, read in any order.

The Color of Magic is hilarious. It is also disjointed at times, but eventually the disjointedness explains itself, more or less. The main characters are Twoflower, Rincewind, the luggage, and Death. Twoflower is a traveler from the other side of the disc, and is persistently oblivious to danger, which always seems to work in his favor. Rincewind is a failure of a wizard; a wizard with no magical power at all, who has been assigned to be Twoflower’s guide. The luggage is made of sapient pearwood, and thus has a mind and personality of its own. It doesn’t talk, but people often knows what it is thinking, none-the -less. Death is, well, Death, and is after Rincewind, but things just keep going wrong.

I'll give The Color of Magic a 93.  It loses points for plot confusions; it is a little scattered at times. And while Pratchett is a comedic and creative genius, this first book of the Discworld series has some literary weaknesses; loss of point of view "headpopping," prose that waffles between very good and "someone should have read this before printing." The problem is, I think that sometimes Pratchess reaches too hard for the joke.