Discworld Read-Along #2: The Light Fantastic
The Light Fantastic by the remarkable Terry Pratchett is the second novel in the vast Discworld series. It starkly contrasts with its predecessor, The Colour of Magic, yet follows it up wonderfully. In today’s read-along discussion, I’m going to talk about how The Light Fantastic improves the Discworld formula, what the book is really about, and then I’ll provide my thoughts on it before moving on to your thoughts on it, which were shared via polls. Let’s jump into this in-depth discussion of Terry Pratchett’s The Light Fantastic.
Summary
When we left our heroes—or wannabes—at the end of The Colour of Magic, they had fallen off the edge of the disc. That very much seems like it would be the end of them, but something miraculous happens: reality shifts to save them, allowing Rincewind to fall into a forest rather than the emptiness of space. We later learn that the spell in Rincewind’s head was saved by the Octavo, Rincewind only being saved by consequence. It turns out that the spell is quite important, and Rincewind is about to be the center of attention.
The wizards of Unseen University believe that Great A’tuin is hurtling toward armageddon—specifically, a fiery death that will kill everyone on the disc—and the only way that they can stop him is by saying the eight spells together. Alas, only seven of the spells are in the Octavo, as one of them is stuck in Rincewind’s head. A race begins to find Rincewind and the eighth spell—a race between the wizards and a rogue among them, Trymon. Trymon hungers for power and knows that if he has all eight spells, he’ll be quite powerful.
Rincewind and Twoflower evade capture by the wizards and meet a druid on a floating rock, which results in some hilarious banter. Their journey henceforth sees them rescuing a woman named Bethan from being sacrificed—something she was actually quite excited about having done—and encountering the eccentric barbarian Cohen. Later, Rincewind encounters trolls who help him save his companions from capture by the barbarian Herrena (presumably sent by Trymon)—an especially exciting encounter given that Herrena and her party have brought them into a cave that turns out to be the mouth of Old Grandad.
When our party reaches Unseen University, they discover that Trymon has already said seven of the eight spells, increasing his power. During the battle between Trymon and Rincewind, Trymon transforms into a horrifying monster, nearly defeating Rincewind until Twoflower of all people swings a sword and kills the malformed Trymon. Rincewind attempts to save the world by reading all eight spells together, but nothing happens… until Bethan points out he mispronounced a word. Once everything is pronounced correctly, the day is saved by Rincewind and we move on to a heartwarming wrap-up that sees Twoflower return home after Rincewind begrudgingly adopts Luggage and decides to restart his studies as a wizard.
My Thoughts
We’ll discuss your thoughts on The Light Fantastic momentarily, but first, I’ll give you my own thoughts on this book. The Light Fantastic was even better than I remembered—it definitely still has a bit of that experimental feel that was present in The Colour of Magic, but significantly less so. This story is far more cohesive than its predecessor and doesn’t feel as broken up as the first Discworld novel. Rather than a series of similar short stories, this feels more like a standard fantasy novel that follows conventional beats. While the story's bones are relatively predictable, the meat of the tale is unique, amusing, and entertaining from beginning to end.
I enjoy that we have a recognizable villain in this story—one whose motivations are pretty simple: he wants power. The misguided Trymon wants the eight spells for himself so that he becomes the most powerful wizard alive, and he’s doing everything he can to achieve that power, even going so far as to read only seven of the eight spells regardless of the consequences. It makes for a genuinely entertaining climax, particularly when Twoflower shockingly saves the day.
While I did enjoy this story quite a bit more than I enjoyed The Colour of Magic, it definitely isn’t making its way into my top ten Discworld novels any time soon. You can still feel Terry Pratchett figuring out his world and the characters who populate it, which is well and good, but it means that the story still doesn’t quite feel like Discworld just yet. As a friend of mine put it recently, many of these early books feel more like transcribed D&D campaigns than novels, which is a fair comparison. It’s going to take several books for us to get out of that feeling, though—many of these early novels do have that feeling, though it isn’t always a detractor from the enjoyment of the story at hand.
I’ll give The Light Fantastic four out of five stars; it was fun and certainly an improvement over The Colour of Magic, but is still a few qualities shy of being the Discworld I love. I had a great time rereading this story, and that’s all that truly matters.
All of that said, it’s time to move on to your thoughts on Discworld’s second novel, The Light Fantastic.
Your Thoughts
If you aren’t aware, this is a read-along, meaning you can read the series along with me! We’re going in chronological order, so the next story we’ll be reading is Equal Rites. There’s still plenty of time to catch up, and we’re reading Discworld at a pretty gradual pace. I’ll also be taking December off, so you’ll have about two months before you need to have Equal Rites read! For each book, I put up polls on my Instagram and Twitter accounts, as well as the Community Tab on my YouTube channel (which I just got access to; awesome!). I also ask for comments and general thoughts from those reading along. All those responses are compiled through a magical machine—my dysfunctional brain—and from there, I write this section of the read-along discussion! So if you want to have your thoughts considered for the next book, go ahead and join in on the read-along!
Poll Results
Let’s begin with the poll results. For each of these books, I ask the participants across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram what their thoughts are in a poll format before they participate in the discussion portion of the read-along. Let’s go through those responses I received!
Star Rating
Overall, the majority here is still leaning toward giving the book three stars, much like The Colour of Magic received earlier in our read-along. I’m a bit surprised to see that four stars was not the majority in the end, as I feel it really picked up a lot of the slack left by The Colour of Magic. However, some folks mentioned that they feel there wasn’t enough to differentiate them to warrant a higher star rating. That I suppose I do understand; while The Colour of Magic was a series of whimsical short stories, The Light Fantastic is one long, cohesive story, but it’s just as whimsical and follows a similar formula as its predecessor, so I guess there isn’t enough to differentiate them for some readers.
Den said it well on Twitter: “I remember it being kind of fun, but since I started with Guards Guards, it became not memorable for anything specific.”
That’s something I feel as I read through this series chronologically. I don’t remember much of anything from these early books, while content from the later books is fresh in my mind as though I just read the works yesterday. With them all blurring together, I guess it makes sense that they’d receive consistently average ratings.
Favorite Characters
Favorite characters is a pretty fun one to see; I always expect some diversity in this, and I wasn’t disappointed here. There’s a pretty good spread among Twoflower, Rincewind, and Cohen. All of them shine in this book, and their personalities are excellently penned; notably Cohen, I found, who I have always loved despite having forgotten how fantastic he is in this book.
Twoflower was just a nuisance in the first book, but here in The Light Fantastic, he grows on you, and you come to appreciate what he brings not just to the humor but to the story as a whole. By the end, I was sad to see him go.
I, of course, got a comment remarking that Death was a favorite in this book; I’ve always got to have one because, let’s face it, Death is the best. Death is my favorite character in the entirety of Discworld, and I’m enjoying getting reminders of how much fun he was even at the dawn of the Discworld series. I’m excited to get to our first book in the Death collection soon!
Best Thing About The Light Fantastic
Next up, I asked participants what their favorite thing about The Light Fantastic is. I provided the options of Characters, Story, Writing/Humor, or something else. It seems that overall, the writing and humor won out, though Characters wasn’t far behind and there were even a couple of votes for the story. I’m not surprised at all to see the writing and humor win out on this one; the story is pretty much standard fantasy and while the characters are fun, they aren’t explored all that much beyond Rincewind. I’m interested to see which Discworld book will swing this in favor of the story over the humor—I feel like Mort may be the first, but that’s just my personal prediction.
What Didn’t You Like About The Light Fantastic
Following up what you loved most, I asked what you disliked the most, presenting similar options though I swapped characters for pacing. The choices I presented here were Pacing, Story, and Writing. I was curious to see which one would win here, because Pacing was very clearly the issue with The Colour of Magic, but The Light Fantastic had pretty decent pacing, I thought. Let’s look at the results.
We actually had a pretty even spread, and a number of text responses that I’d like to get to. It’s hard to say what people liked least as a result, though it doesn’t like writing was the least favorite aspect of the story. Let’s take a look at some of the text responses I received on this.
“I find a lot of places are introduced quickly and we don’t get a great sense of the scale or distance between them.” from Darrin over on Instagram.
I absolutely get this; without a map in the book—at least in my copy—and without a clear sense of scale and time, the pacing of the story doesn’t always feels sensible. We’re shown new locations and people for a brief moment and are then rapidly whisked away to somewhere and someone else. While the story does move far more quickly and is more engaging than The Colour of Magic, the downside of the pacing here is that we really don’t get to understand the world at all.
“Even though it was better than The Colour of Magic, it still has a very generic fantasy feel with just enough original story to keep me hooked.” from Velda on YouTube.
I definitely agree with the story feeling pretty generic; it’s Pratchett’s writing that really sets The Light Fantastic apart from other works of this nature. I’m looking forward to getting some of the later books where the story doesn’t feel quite as generic and predictable!
Did You Enjoy it More or Less Than The Colour of Magic
This to sate my own curiosity more than anything else; I wanted to know if The Light Fantastic was overall a more enjoyable read for everyone than the first Discworld novel, which had been my hypothesis. I feel like while it may still be a three or four-star read for most, it’s more fun to read than The Colour of Magic. However…
Ultimately, people enjoyed it roughly the same as they enjoyed The Light Fantastic, though some enjoyed it more and a couple of folks actually enjoyed it less. That last one really surprised me. I couldn’t believe that there was anyone who liked it less than the first book, which felt so disjointed to many participants in this read-along. I did get an explanation from someone for this, though.
User Patch of Clover says… “Hard to say, but I’d say less. Colour of Magic was my intro to Discworld, and stood as a gateway to what clever fantasy writing could be. The Light Fantastic could have been phenomenal by all standards, and it would probably still not match its predecessor by the logic of introduction alone.
Both are still fantastic, imo though. I know some folk don’t wholly care for the Rincewind stories but they’re my favorite. Rincewind is an all time favorite character.”
I really appreciate that insight, which helped me get an idea of why some people may enjoy The Light Fantastic less than the first book. It seems that sentimentality and appreciation for world introduction play a significant role here. I can definitely see The Colour of Magic having a special place in your heart if it really was your first ever Discworld novel, preventing The Light Fantastic from being perceived as a better work. Additionally, it really is a strong (and unique) introduction to a new fantasy setting, while The Light Fantastic spends less time world building and more time grounding the world established by the first book.
Will You Continue Reading Discworld?
And now for the final poll question: will you continue to read Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series? Of course, just about everyone said yes enthusiastically, and while no one explicitly said no, I did get a couple of people who said they’re undecided on the YouTube post.
That’s a bit disappointing to hear, but I definitely understand feeling discouraged after getting through The Light Fantastic and not loving the story as much as you had hoped you would. My hope is that the humor and clever writing on Pratchett’s part will encourage you to keep going and that you enjoy that enough to power through some of these earlier stories that may not be as fun and engaging as the later ones. It only gets better from here, as I said last time!
Favorite Quote or Scene
As always, I asked people to provide me with their favorite quote or scene. Myself, I enjoy the early moment when Death is summoned while he’s in the midst of a party, as well as the interaction between Rincewind and the druid while they’re on the flying rock. Ken from Twitter provided another excellent quote:
“Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread taht if women were allowed to mess around with magic, they would probably be embarrassingly good at it.”
This is an excellent quote choice and it is a solid bit of worldbuilding, especially since we’re all about to find out what women are capable of when they use magic—and we’re going to learn more about the world in general—when we get to the next book: Equal Rites. And that’s a great segway into the next part of this post.
What’s Next?
Well, I hope you enjoyed The Light Fantastic and I hope that you’re hungry for more! The Light Fantastic was a great conclusion to Rincewind’s story for the time being, so we’re heading into a new tale with Equal Rites, the third book in the Discworld setting and the first book in the Witches collection. As always, I’ll have a link below that you can use to buy this book and, if you do purchase it through that link, I’ll get a few cents that help with all the cents I’m losing every time I make one of these posts, so thank you very much.
The discussion posts for Equal Rites will go up on JANUARY 4TH and the discussion video will go up the following Wednesday, on JANUARY 11TH, so you just need to have the book read in a little over a month if you want to participate in the discussion!
Thanks very much for participating in the read-along and getting me your responses. I’d love to have more people join in these discussions, so if you’re interested in reading along, feel free to catch up to us at your leisure! These books are straightforward and quick to read, so don’t let the number of books between where you’re at and where the read-along is hold you back!
Conclusion
Thanks again for your participation, it means the world to me. I’m sorry that this post was so late and that I wasn’t able to get a video out when I wanted to; I’ve been moving and I only just finished setting up the recording studio. Moving is hard, setting up a new studio is hard, but I’m making progress and I’m so excited for this new phase in my life and this channel! Your patience and understanding during this is greatly appreciated.