The Colour of Magic

I’m cheating here. I actually started with The Colour of Magic and kept reading all 41 Discworld books. While The Colour of Magic is brilliant alone, it’s even better as the launching point for the most fantastic, absurd, ridiculous adventures, served with a side of insightful social commentary.  If there had been another hundred books, I would have just kept reading.

In this first book, we meet Rincewind, who is fleeing practically everything, followed by a walking wooden box known as Luggage. Rincewind is an utter failure as a wizard, and his only talent is running away. He survives, hilariously,… show more.

The Colour of Magic is the first entry in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and it’s a classic—it being a children’s book should not put you off.

In fact, if you’re new to fantasy, enjoying the light-hearted nature of Pratchett’s work and his appeal to the child’s mind only makes the book more fantastic. I don’t believe I’ve found another fantasy novel that matches the imagination found in The Colour of Magic.

It’s this imagination of Pratchett’s—and his unrelenting self-awareness—that inspired my latest book.

Once you start with Terry Pratchett, you won’t be able to stop. His books are highly entertaining and he has a unique style of writing that makes them something special. He develops a number of different characters throughout the books, but this first one contains my favourite: Rincewind, the most inept wizard ever created (and don’t get me started on the Luggage). The world the discworld series is set in is so far beyond anything anyone else has done it is amazing. Ridiculous, but amazing.      

The Colour of Magic was the first of Sir Terry Pratchet’s novels I read, and although it has been nearly ten years, I still find myself drawn back to the depths of its pages. Full of intriguing characters set in a perplexing and amazing world, the likes of which will shape the genre for many years to come. The story follows a character, who is not only about as void of magic as you can come, but absolutely hopeless at pretty much everything else. It was a refreshing change from the standard “man with no powers finds power” stance and… show more.

Anything by Terry Pratchett is going to fly! One of my favorite quotes is Pratchett’s “A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.” The Colour of Magic is the first in the Discworld series and was recommended to me by a student who was trying to curry favor in a college composition class. Pretty sure he got a C because he couldn’t write, but I owe him something for turning me on to… show more.

What can be said about these that hasn’t already been said? Obviously intended as an affectionate spoof on the fantasy genre, the Discworld has garnered a following as great as that of Tolkien (albeit with tongue firmly in cheek) and has covered virtually every subject known to man (and troll, dwarf, undead, etc.).

My favourite story is probably “Guards! Guards!” in which we are introduced to the cynical and hard-bitten captain of the Watch, Sam Vimes – along with his motley crew.

Another character of which I am particularly fond is Death, represented as the typical skeleton in a black… show more.

I always seem to stumble across my best reads. I found The Colour of Magic when I was in a huge shopping precinct. A new book store had opened and I went in to browse, in the fantasy section of course, and that’s when I hit pure gold. The saying: “Never judge a book by its cover”, may or may not be true, but that’s what drew me to The Colour of Magic. Josh Kirby’s illustration of a multi-legged luggage chest, running rampant, immediately drew my attention. I read the blurb: “Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality… show more.