Discworld Read-Along #1: The Colour of Magic
Discworld! Terry Pratchett’s extensive, beloved fantasy series spans over forty novels, and we’ve just read the first one! The Colour of Magic is a whimsical adventure following Rincewind and Twoflower across the Disc and over the brim. Today, we’re going to be talking about this entry into Discworld. I’ll give my thoughts on it, then I’ll read out and discuss some thoughts I received from other readers. After that, we’ll read the second book in the series to prepare for our subsequent discussion, and I’ll give dates for that coming up shortly.
A Synopsis of The Colour of Magic
The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett is the very first Discworld novel. It is four separate stories that take place on the Disc and follow (mostly) Rincewind and Twoflower, an unlikely combo of a failed wizard and the world’s very first member of the Tourist species. Each story is a whacky misadventure that quickly whisks the reader from the city of Ankh-Morpork to the world's edge (and over it).
In the first story, Twoflower, an insurance salesman from the Counterweight Continent, comes to Ankh-Morpork as the first-ever tourist. He comes with his own set of walking, biting, sentient luggage. He also comes with an ungodly amount of coin, which he honestly doesn’t know the value of. This makes him a ripe target for thieves, assassins, and naer-do-wells. And so, Twoflower hires Rincewind as his guide for an outrageous sum, and Rincewind (sort of) shows him the way of the world in Ankh-Morpork.
Next, in the second story, we venture to the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth, Bel-Shamharoth being some unknowable, Lovecraftian entity. It is entirely sensible within this temple not to say a particular number (eight, being that number). Of course, the talking sword of Hrun the Barbarian does say the number you aren’t supposed to, which summons Bel-Shamharoth. Twoflower, trying to photograph the ensuing battle, kills the monster with his camera flash.
In the third story, Rincewind, Twoflower, and Hrun the Barbarian encounter dragonriders. Twoflower and Hrun are kidnapped and Rincewind takes Hrun’s talking sword with him to rescue them. There, Rincewind engages in a duel against the dragonlord while the dragonlord’s daughter proposes marriage to Hrun, provided that Hrun kills her brothers so that he can become the ruler himself. Hrun, of course, accepts the offer. During a botched rescue—one that Hrun doesn’t actually need, unbeknownst to Twoflower, who is heroically saving his companions with a dragon he conjured with his imagination—Twoflower, Rincewind, and Hrun escape the dragonriders. Still, then Twoflower faints and his dragon vanishes. Hrun is saved by the princess, leaving Twoflower and Rincewind to collapse into the Circle Sea along with Luggage, who it turns out makes a decent enough floatation device.
Then, in the fourth and final story, Rincewind and Twoflower approach the rim of the Disc. Thankfully, they avoid this grisly death thanks to hitting the Circumfence. They’re rescued from their predicament by a sea troll named Tethis, though the rescue turns out not to be much of one, since they’re only being rescued so that they can be sacrificed later. They escape, but unfortunately only to find themselves in yet another state of danger, as Twoflower is launched over the edge in a spaceship and Rincewind falls over the edge himself, plummeting into space before Great A’Tuin.
My Thoughts on The Colour of Magic
I’ve said a number of times before when discussing Discworld that The Colour of Magic is my least favorite of the Discworld novels. It’s not a bad story by any means—it’s an excellent, whimsical ride—but it doesn’t hold a candle to the other works in this expansive series. There are also some problems with it, including how disconnected it feels.
There’s plenty of fun to be had in The Colour of Magic, and Terry Pratchett’s thoughtful humor and musings are absolutely present in the pages of this book, but the story is lacking and the pacing feels off. Having four vaguely connected stories also makes the book a bit challenging to follow compared to some of the later Discworld novels, and the themes are constantly shifting. Additionally, the repetition of the crew entering one dangerous situation, escaping, and ending up in another loses its guile with each new story.
I don’t dislike this book by any means, and I did have a good time reading through it again, but I could see myself being discouraged from reading Discworld if this were the first book in the series that I read. Thankfully, I know that Discworld substantially improves from here onward, especially once we get to books like Guards! Guards! or stories in the Industrial Revolution series.
If I were going to give The Colour of Magic a star rating, I’d give it four stars. It’s a lot of fun, and there’s plenty to love, such as the characters, as a great example, but the inconsistent pacing and abruptly shifting flow of the tale makes it a less delightful read than the later Discworld works we’ll be working through in this read-along.
Your Thoughts on The Colour of Magic
This is a read-along! So, of course, I’m reading Discworld along with plenty of other wonderful folks. The Wednesday before the discussion videos for this read-along are posted, I put polls up on my Twitter and Instagram accounts for people to read and review. Participants in the read-along will have all day Wednesday and Thursday to respond to the poll with your thoughts, as well as leave comments, replies, and messages that I’ll read through, respond to, and eventually discuss in the discussion video!
So let’s check the polls, tally the results, and see what everyone thought about this first book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
The Poll Results
I had a number of questions that I posed to folks on my Twitter and Instagram accounts. I will go through the polls individually; then we’ll check out the comments and messages I received from my fellow Discworld readers. The first question that I asked everyone was, obviously, whether or not they’d actually done the reading. Thankfully, most people had! 78% of responders had read The Colour of Magic, while 9% said they were working on it. And hey, for those who are still working on it, don’t worry! I take December off, so you’ll have plenty of time to catch up!
Next, I asked people to give The Colour of Magic a star rating between one and five. The results were roughly what I expected here since it isn’t as excellent a book in the series as the later works are. However, I myself gave it four stars, so seeing the ratings here skew strongly in favor of three wasn’t exactly what I expected. 65% of people gave it three stars, with four stars in second place at 29%. Some folks gave it five stars, and wow, if that’s you, you’re going to love what’s coming soon. I’m relieved that there weren’t any one or two star ratings!
With that, I moved on to asking what people enjoyed about the book, giving three options and then the option the comment something you enjoyed, instead. The options I gave were Humor, Characters, and Story. I figured someone would vote for the story, but it walked away with 0% of the vote. Yeah, the story of The Colour of Magic just doesn’t really shine all that much, as some people let me know. The majority of the vote went to the humor of The Colour of Magic with 62%. Nice! The humor in Pratchett’s writing really steals the show in this book for sure; while the characters are great, the pages are filled with witty remarks straight from the narrator (and, of course, the trademark footnotes). Second up was Characters with 39%, and that’s actually a great segue into the next poll…
The next question I asked was about favorite characters! I chose to give our three main characters as options: Rincewind, Twoflower, and Luggage. I also gave a fourth option to allow people to give me a comment or message regarding their favorite characters. I got a couple of suggestions from that which I’ll go over momentarily! First, let’s see the poll results. It may surprise you to learn that Luggage won this poll by a mile. With 69% of the vote, Luggage is apparently a crowd favorite.
Luggage was my vote, tool; not only is it a remarkable and fantastical character, but this wooden box with many little legs and a mouthful of gold has a striking personality. We’ll get more of Luggage in The Light Fantastic, too, so if you loved Luggage in The Colour of Magic, you’re in for a treat with the second book.
As great as Luggage is, though, I was surprised to see that Twoflower did not receive any votes in either of the polls! I’ll concur that Twoflower is annoying, but in a wholesome way that makes you want to pat his head and say “oh you” through your set teeth. Really? No one favored Twoflower over Luggage and Rincewind? All right, then.
From there, though, I went to find out what people were saying about their other favorite characters. No one mentioned Hrun, but there was a mention of my favorite character in the entirety of Discworld: Death. Corro mentions Death in the comments, saying “I absolutely adored Death. Every time Death popped up, the humor was just phenomenal.” Totally agree! Death is an outstanding character throughout Discworld. I enjoyed him in The Colour of Magic, undoubtedly, though he hasn’t totally grown into himself just yet. Even from The Light Fantastic onward, we really get a better feel for the chill nonchalance with which Death carries himself. He has a very casual, simple approach to his job, and why wouldn’t he? It’s just a job, and it needs doing.
There’s a lot that I could say about the character of Death in Discworld, but I think that’s best saved for an essay later down the road. Hint hint.
Let’s move on from there to my next question in the poll: what didn’t you like about the book? An incredible 71% said that the pacing was the issue, and that is completely what I think drags this book down for me. The vaguely connected short stories that make up The Colour of Magic make it a confusing blend between an anthology and a novel, and each of the stories is so unique despite featuring basically the same cast of characters that following it can be a pain. Pacing is The Colour of Magic’s weakest link, but I feel like this is correct in The Light Fantastic, so don’t fret too much.
My next two poll questions were pretty interesting to me. Firstly, 69% of people said that they had never read a Discworld novel before. That’s awesome! I’m glad that this has brought in so many new readers. Welcome to Discworld! I’m excited for you to find all that Discworld has to offer. The next question was whether or not you would be continuing on with the series, and a little under 80% said yes between Twitter and Instagram. That’s awesome! It only gets better after The Colour of Magic, so if you enjoyed this read, I’m excited to hear what you think of the next book.
Additional Remarks
Now let’s get into some further discussion with everyone. I asked about favorite quotes or scenes and got a couple of great answers! One of them was from Darrin on Instagram, who says: “Something about the Imp inside the camera makes me laugh; I mean, that’s gold!”. I wholeheartedly agree, the imps are a much beloved and hilarious explanation for technology in Discworld. The fact that all of this tech is essentially run by tiny little imps that do things like rapidly paint pictures to create photographs or that run messages across town via definitely-not-cellphones is simply wonderful. The imps have their own personalities; sometimes they take breaks or don’t feel like doing much of anything, which sounds like trying to negotiate with your printer. I love the imps!
Another Instagram response comes from Neo, who says “The climax of the final story in Krull”. The ending of The Colour of Magic really is outstanding. Terry Pratchett kicks it up a notch and leaves you wondering what’s going to happen next and how our wannabe heroes will make it out of this situation. Discworld could well have ended there, with Twoflower and Rincewind having gone over the edge of the Disc (Twoflower in a slapshod spaceship, Rincewind in freefall). It’s a great conclusion!
Next comes something that does really need to be discussed. I’m going to use a response I received from Ken on Twitter, but this is something I heard several times in messages and replies. Ken says: “This felt like a first novel that should have had another rewrite, I did love the book, but I don't think I would read more if I didn't know that the books get better as they go along. It felt like a series of disjointed short stories that were forced together with two mains.”
That’s a solid summation of The Colour of Magic and is also why I haven’t previously recommended that people start with the first book in the Discworld series. It isn’t a strong entry point and doesn’t showcase just how excellent Discworld can be. The word I often heard from people when they talked about this book was disjointed. That is the perfect word to describe The Colour of Magic. It feels disconnected and unintentionally confusing, featuring four stories tethered together by Rincewind, Twoflower, and Luggage.
Lastly, I asked people for their favorite quotes; I got a pretty good response that honestly represents my favorite aspect of Terry Pratchett’s humor: bizarre comparisons and anthropomorphizing. Jameson on Twitter says: “Rincewind tried to force the memory out of his mind, but it was rather enjoying itself there, terrorizing the other occupants and kicking over the furniture.” This is a great line; frankly, I feel that this is the sort of thing we can apply to some things we would prefer not to remember. Sometimes, they just make themselves right at home, disrupting the whole place as they do so.
What’s Next?
So what are we reading next? Our next book is The Light Fantastic, the second book in the Discworld series! I’ll have links in the description so you can pick it up from Amazon. As before, if you buy it through my link, I get a few cents from the purchase, which supports what I’m doing here. You don’t have to, obviously, but it does help out!
My discussion posts on Instagram and Twitter for The Light Fantastic will be going up on November 9th, so you should have the book finished by then if you’d like to partake in the discussion. Then, the discussion video will be posted on November 16th, which is also when we’ll start reading the third book. So go on, pick up your copy of The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett and get to reading! This one’s a big step up over The Colour of Magic, so I’m excited to talk about it with everyone.
Conclusion
Thank you so much to everyone participating in the Read-Along thus far! I’m so elated to be on this journey through Discworld with you. If you haven’t started yet, don’t worry! There’s plenty of time, and in December, I take a break from creating content, so you’ll be able to catch up on these books. The early Discworld books are short too, so there’s no excuse! Get your copies of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic so you can participate in the read-along with us!