Pratchett: The Colour of Magic review

In The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett introduces us to the Discworld - a flat world held up by 4 elephants riding on the back of a giant, space-swimming turtle. In the Discworld we meet Rincewind, an incompetent (though not really his fault) wizard, and Twoflower, a tourist from the counterweight continent (which is small, but made mostly of gold so it's rather heavy and helps balance the other continents on the Discworld).

Twoflower has come to the twin city of Ankh-Morpork on vacation. There, he meets Rincewind who becomes his reluctant tour-guide. Together, they journey throughout the world meeting satirical versions of classic fantasy stock-characters and memes and even some rather specific characters and ideas (such as the Dragonriders of Pern). All the while, they're being used as playing pieces in a board game played by the gods. And if that isn't enough, Death keeps chasing Rincewind and hoping to claim his life. Minor point here, certain beings, wizards among them, can see into the octarine (the color of magic). Those beings deaths are handled by Death personally rather than by one of his minions.

This is a pretty hilarious tale. I really enjoyed the nature of the Discworld and I loved the juxtaposition of the fantasy genre with more modern concepts such as tourism, economics, statistics, and insurance policies. People have been recommending Pratchett's Discworld books to me for years, and I've always had too many other books on my list so I never quite got to them. Now that I've started, I'll probably be reading a lot of Pratchett for a while.
/ [Viking]

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