Discworld, a fantastic plane of
existence. It is shaped as a disc, resting on the shoulders of 4
elephants standing on the shell of a giant star turtle. This weird,
but wonderful creation came from the imaginative mind of fantasy
author Terry Pratchett. For more than 30 years, Sir Terry was pumping
out volumes after volumes of wondrous novels set in Discworld,
telling stories about eccentric characters and marvelous adventures.
This series, 41 volumes in total, is a phenomenal success! After it
was translated into 37 languages and sold 80 million copies, Dscworld
has captured the hearts of millions of readers with its wicked humor
and profound insight into our own world. But where did it all begin?
I have read about 20 Discworld novels.
But strangely enough, I have never read the first installment in the
series. In fact, I have been navigating through my own Discworld
adventure in a funny order. Why? This is because Discworld's library
divides itself into sub-series, and I am tackling Discworld according
to sub-series instead of following the chronological order. Some
sub-series focused on certain characters, while other sub-series
featured specific themes. For your reference, the sub-series in
Discworld are: Rincewind series, Death Series, The Witches series,
The City Watch series, Tiffany Aching series, The Industrial
Revolution series, and The Ancient Civilization series.
Nevertheless, the time has finally
arrived for me to start reading Rincewind series. The beginning of
Rincewind's adventure, published in 1986 and titled The Color of
Magic, also happens to be the genesis for Discworld.
Synopsis:
Welcome! Welcome to a living, breathing
world of dragons, barbarian heroes, magic swords, wizards, and... a
tourist?
Yes, indeed, with the arrival of a
creaking ship at Ankh Morpork's shady port comes Discworld's first
tourist - a man of a small statue. His name is Twoflower and he
possesses a magical luggage that walks on hundreds of little legs!
Twoflower set his foot on Anhk
Morpork's cobbled street, then he hired a failed wizard, Rincewind,
to be his tour guide. Together, this duo (or trio, if you consider
the luggage with a hundred legs as a being) set out on an stupendous
expedition of sight seeing from the heart of Ankh Morpork all the way
to the edge of the world...
My thoughts on this book:
As a veteran of Discworld, while I was reading The Color of Magic, the first thing that screamed for my
attention, was the major difference between this book to other
Discworld novels. What do I mean by this? Ok, Discworld novels are
renowned not just for the abundant humors, but also for Sir Terry's
philosophical, and often insightful reflections about our own world.
The Color of Magic, however, lacks Discworld's hallmark of
philosophical introspections. While this book is still bursting with
flavors of humor that will tickle your funny bone, but it does not
have any philosophical element (none that I can spot, at least).
In other words, The Color of Magic is a
straight parody of pulp literature and it is very funny! If you are
like me, a fan of pulp writers such as Robert E. Howard and H.P.
Lovecraft, then you can't help but spotting and appreciating the
glaring references to Conan the Cimmerian, Necronomicon, and Cthulhu.
For me, reading The Color of Magic was fun. This book put a smirk on
my face when its story revealed Hrun, a muscle bound, barbarian hero
who is essentially, a parody of Conan. And I smiled toothy grins at
the numerous parodies of the classical Lovecraftian horror.
In the process of writing this book
review, I browsed through some reviews for The Color of Magic. Some
readers mentioned that they thought the book's narrative is a bit
random and difficult to follow. I share this sentiment too.
Randomness has always been in the DNA of Discworld, reading these
books sometimes feel like watching a Monty Python movie. The
randomness is usually more apparent in the beginning of a Discworld book, where the story has a piece here and a piece there,
and the narrative usually pieces itself together after one quarter
into the book. In The Color of Magic, this feeling of randomness is
even more apparent and persistent. This also means, the narrative
in The Color of Magic is not very coherent. And some readers might
find Discworld's maiden journey really difficult to follow. If The
Color of Magic utterly confuses you, then don't worry, because you
are not the only one who feels this way. Having said this, do not form
an opinion about Discworld based on this book, because Sir Terry's
style kept evolving as the series went on, and a lot of latter
Discworld novels are nothing but pure gold.
It is not uncommon to hear a reader say, that despite having an interest in reading Discworld, but he/she feels overwhelmed by the series' sheer size and don't know where to start. If this is you, then I
recommend The Color of Magic as an entry point. Yes, while The Color
of Magic lacks Sir Terry's philosophical insights that made Discworld
novels so good; but this book, as a first installment to a series,
established the ground works for Discworld. The Color of Magic is a
light, humorous introduction to Discworld, and it is an enjoyable
read that can give a new comer to the series some general
understanding about Discworld's culture, people, geography, and
cities. Now that I have read The Color of Magic, I think my own
adventure in Discworld could have been more exciting, if I had
started the series at The Color of Magic instead of at Small Gods. But that no
longer matters. The important thing is this, if you are a new comer
to Discworld series, then I highly recommend starting it at The Color
of Magic.
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