The book that started off the Discworld series, The Colour Of Magic is primarily concerned with the escapades of the Disc's
first tourist, Twoflower, and an inept
wizard, Rincewind. Rincewind is incapable of becoming a capable wizard, as one of the eight Great Spells has lodged itself in his brain, and other, lesser spells are too afraid of it to go into his head. Twoflower is from the Counterfeit continent, which officially doesn't exist. (If enough people stop believing in it, it will cease to exist...) Rincewind becomes Twoflower's reluctant guide to Ankh-Morpork (the capital city). The interchange between the two characters works well in the second half of the book, and the mystical descriptions of modern technology (a camera, for instance, is a box with a little demon inside drawing very, very fast. Oh, and there's a luggage box with legs (and a mind) of its own...
A short description of Discworld for those new to the
series: The basic idea is that Discworld is a flat planet supported on the back of four elephants, who themselves are supported on the back of a giant sea turtle (okay so this bit is stolen from Hindu mythology)called Great A'Tuin. The planet is inhabited by various creatures, such as humans, werewolves, trolls, dwarves and other mythical creatures. Oh and there are wizards (who have their base at Unseen University) and witches around, practicing their magic with various levels of inability. Each race has its own personality traits and history, and there's always some grand plan going on somewhere. The action takes place in various areas, but often centres on the capital city (Ankh-Morpork), where there is a murder every three seconds (or so it is said). The action also often centres on the various guilds on the world, such as the Assassins Guild. There are many in-jokes and takes on modern real-life, and if you like satire and (more importantly) the bizarre and surreal, you'll find the Discworld novels wonderfully funny.
If you've never read a Discworld novel before, I think it should be said that you don't need to start at the beginning to enjoy the rest of the series.
Indeed, each book stands up well in its own right, and everyone will have their own favourite characters, so will probably search out the other books with those characters in first. Of course, others may want to read the series in sequence.
Either way, The Colour Of Magic does not match up to most of the other books. I found that I had to wade through the first part of the book, only beginning to enjoy it after the halfway mark, where the pace picks up and the jokes start to click. A couple of friends failed to make it to that point, and just gave up on the book and indeed the whole series, which is a shame as I feel that if they'd started with one of the other books, they'd have really enjoyed them.
Terry's writing style is evidently not fully developed in this book, and the humour doesn't always work. There are occasional flashes of the brilliance which have made him both one of my favourite authors and one of the world's most successful writers in the last decade. However, these are fairly few and far between, and this is one of only two Discworld novels I wouldn't want to read again.
This novel focuses largely on the wizards of Unseen University, which is no bad thing as they are some of the best characters, and centres mainly on Ankh -Morpork, though it finishes at the edge of the world (quite literally). Death makes a few welcome appearances, in fact he is constantly trying to kill Rincewind (or at least persuade him to accept the inevitable and die on the many occurrences of severe danger he finds himself in). Ironically, at the end of the book when Rincewind is about to meet his end by falling off the edge of the world, Death is busy, so an understudy has to stand in for him. The catch is, when wizards die, they have to be taken by Death personally. This leads to a wonderful section right at the end ore Death's understudy is trying to persuade Rincewind to die. Rincewind, perhaps understandably, is reluctant to die and demands his right as a wizard to be taken by Death himself. (Being a wizard does have its advantages after all.) If the rest of the book were up to the standard of this little exchange, I'd have no hesitation recommending it. As it is, the first book in the Discworld series is also one of the weakest.
Thanks for reading,
CaptainD (This review was first published on Epinions.)