The Color of Magic

How does one rate a book published thirty years ago, by an author considered among the greats of our day, and that commences one of the most read and popular series in recent times?

The Color of Magic introduces us to Discworld, a series that has grown to include forty novels. Given that I didn't discover Terry Pratchett or Discworld until the 2004 Going Postal, which was number 33 in the series, it might be asked how I jumped in, as well as whether the series ends. Fortunately, each novel stands alone, and no new reader needs to have read previous books in order to understand what's going on in this one.

Since Going Postal, I've since read a couple of other Discworld novels, but I've never read the early ones. That changed when, a couple of months back, my good neighbor and friend Mike mentioned that he was looking for a good home for his substantial collection of Pratchett novels, including nearly all of the Discworld novels. I about wet my pants with excitement when I heard and couldn't wait to start reading.

The Color of Magic lays out the elements of Discworld that have since become familiar to millions (I once read that Pratchett's books had the distinction of being those most often stolen from booksellers in the British Isles): Discworld is flat. As is explained in another of the Discworld novels, when introducing the character Death:

"This is the Death whose particular sphere of operations is, well, not a sphere at all, but the Discworld, which is flat and rides on the back of four giant elephants who stand on the shell of the enormous star turtle Great A'Tuin, and which is bounded by a waterfall that cascades endlessly into space.

"Scientists have calculated that the chance of anything so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten."

If that doesn't give you enough of a taste to tell that Discworld is not only part fantasy but also partly tongue-in-cheek satire, then one need only get to know the heroes of the quest to realize how little Pratchett takes his fictional world seriously (unless you consider being serious about writing a rollicking good story, which Pratchett is). Rincewind is the wizard who lacks any real wizarding skills, except perhaps that he's very good at dodging death (both in the abstract and the concrete in the person of Death). Along for the ride, if as the ostensible McGuffin, is Twoflower, a tourist from a far of empire who is oblivious to danger, and The Luggage, a semi-sentient and energetic piece of luggage made from sapient pearwood, and Cohen the Barbarian (and he's not a mockery of Schwarzenneger's Conan, I'm not sure what is).

Each is a riff or commentary, delightfully and humorously drawn to entertaining effect, and it's not hard to hear echoes of Mark Twain and Douglas Adams in Pratchett's writing, though, to be honest, Pratchett is a flavor all his own. Here are a few lines that Pratchett slips in, each full of commentary and satire, and yet humorous all on their own:

• "The Watch were always careful not to intervene too soon in any brawl where the odds were not heavily stacked in their favour. The job carried a pension, and attracted a cautious, thoughtful kind of man."
• "Picturesque meant - he decided after careful observation of the scenery that inspired Twoflower to use the word - that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown. Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the Discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant 'idiot'."
• "What heroes like best is themselves."
• "He wondered what kind of life it would be, having to keep swimming all the time to stay exactly in the same place. Pretty similar to his own, he decided."
• "Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying."
• "I've seen excitement, and I've seen boredom. And boredom was best."

And Pratchett's The Color of Magic is anything but "boredom." If you've never had the opportunity to enjoy a Discworld novel, The Color of Magic is a fantastic place to begin.

(And many thanks, Mike, for gifting me the wonderful lands of Discworld.)