The Color of Magic

By Terry Pratchett

A Novel Of Discworld


Ankh-Morpork has just recieved its first tourist--Twoflower from the Agatean Empire--and the notoriously inept wizard Rincewind has volunteered to be his guide. Well, sort of volunteered, in the sense that he could, if he so chose, leave Twoflower to his fate, and he is not going to get paid for being his guide. He could leave the tourist, that is, if Rincewind wanted to die, as Lord Vetinari made perfectly clear. Now, Rincewind is not a wise wizard, nor powerful, nor brave. What he is, is so cowardly that he can survive almost anything, and he also has one of the Great Spells hanging out in his brain, causing him to be unable to learn any other spell and to be expelled from the Unseen University. So he is really the perfect guide for Twoflower. For, as Rincewind put it, "if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then [Twoflower would] be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor shouting [uncomplimentary things about the gods]." After a misunderstanding in which Twoflower accidentally causes all of Ankh-Morpork to be burnt down, the tourist and his reluctant guide set off across the Disc, narrowly escaping dragons, Bel-Shamharoth*, trolls, and falling off the edge of the Disc. Of course, they do get--oops, can't tell you that, it would spoil the story. Go read it and find out for yourself.

Technically the first book in the Discworld series, The Color of Magic won't really give you any information on Discworld that you wouldn't get from starting with any other book in the series, so it really doesn't matter which you read first. Anyway, I loved (of course) this book! It is over-the-top funny, and just generally awesome! Terry Pratchett, as always, seems unable to write a single paragraph that doesn't poke fun at the world in general, and humanity in specific. The Discworld is a beautifully realised world with fantastic characters and well satirized cliches.Love it, read it, tell other people to read it, re-read it, repeat!

*Also known as the Soul Render, the Sender of Eight, and "the flip side of the coin of which Good and Evil are but one side." Whatever it (he?) is, it has too many tentacles for comfort.