Reviews for The First Discworld Novels: The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic

The average rating for The First Discworld Novels: The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-05-31 00:00:00 Jerome Blancher I'm reviewing these two books together, because despite being two books, they are two halves to a single story. The story of the first tourist on the Discworld, or alternately, the story of how the Discworld was nearly destroyed, or alternately the story of Rincewind and the Octavo, or even a story concerning how nice it is to have a hero around when you need one. In the beginning of this two-part tale, we are first introduced to Terry Pratchett's Discworld - an entire world in the shape of a disc, set on the back of four enormous elephants, riding on the shell of gigantic turtle flying through space. On the Discworld, magic is commonplace, the gods play dice games, and you really can fall off the edge of the earth. The future of Discworld will be forever altered upon the meeting of two unique individuals. First, there is Twoflower, the very first tourist on the Discworld. He is blissfully unaware of danger and dangerously full of imagination. He's loaded to the gills with pure gold and has a luggage trunk that will follow him anywhere and protect him from anything. Or at least try. The second individual is Rincewind, a failed wizard who has been expelled from the Unseen University of Magic for being completely incompetent in the ways of magic. In fact, Rincewind has only ever been able to retain one spell - that of one of the great eight spells of the Octavo. Rumor has it all the other spells are so frightened of this one spell, they refuse to stay in Rincewind's mind. Rincewind is charged with keeping Twoflower safe and making him happy. This seems like it'd be an easy job, but considering their personalities are fantastically opposite from each other, Twoflower has quite the knack for irritating Rincewind. Between the two of them, they discover dragons, trolls, meet several gods, stop pagan sacrifices, arrange romances for heroes, visit Death's house for a game of bridge, and fall off the edge of the Disc. We're introduced to hundreds of violently alive characters, all of whom add a great depth (and often a high sense of hilarity) to the story and the Discworld itself. Having never read any of Terry Pratchett's works, I felt I should probably start at the beginning. "The Colour of Magic" was the very first book written about the Discworld which has now become so famous among sci-fi and fantasy readers. I feel I should say I'm forever indebted to my husband for introducing Pratchett and me. He has all the talent of a fantastically famous writer (he is one) and all the humor and randomness of Douglas Adams. There's not so much that the story is lost, as in some of Adams' works, but there's quite enough to keep me giggling long into the night as I try and squeeze in just a little bit more reading. If you're not a fan of either fantasy or sci-fi, but enjoy books with a social statement to make in a parable-like manner, these books would be a great place to start as an introduction to a phantasmagorically phenomenal series.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-04 00:00:00 Kimberly Spire My goodness, that Terry Pratchett has a gift for twisting language in a way that makes one's insides tickle irresistibly. The characters are amazingly well drawn, the plotlines are thoroughly engaging, and there is nothing like laughing your head off while your spouse looks up enviously from the papers he's grading. In these first 2 Discworld books, the society of Ankh-Morpork is introduced to reflected-sound-of-underground spirits, Death fails, multiple times, to collect a not-quite-wizard, the Discworld's first tourist finds the most decrepit structures "quaint" and "charming," and a sapient pearwood trunk repeatedly saves the day (and disposes of the body). Ingenious. One comment on this particular edition: it's terrible. It seems that they scanned the text of a previous edition, and it didn't all get scanned correctly. It did not negatively affect my considerable enjoyment of the book, but, if you have a choice, get a different edition.