The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett

Publishers: Harper Perennial

Pages: 224

Main Characters:

Rincewind, Twoflower, the Luggage, Death

The Colour of Magic is the first novel in Terry Pratchett’s legendary and loveable Discworld series. The novel takes place on a disc-shaped world, floating on the back of four elephants, which are riding on the back of a giant turtle that travels through the universe! The story follows two main characters, Rincewind and Twoflower. Rincewind is a failed wizard from the city of Ankh-Morpork, who because of his daring nature was expelled from the wizard’s university before he could learn any spells. However, from reading a restricted book (which is the reason he gets through out of the university) he does accidently manage to learn one extremely powerful spell. Unfortunately, the spell will only reveal its words whenever it chooses and again leaves Rincewind a wizard without any magic! Plus, things are made much worse for Rincewind as he is plagued by Death who makes it his goal to kill the unfortunate wizard!

Twoflower is an insurance seller from the Agatean Empire (which is on the opposite side of the Discworld from Ankh- Morpork) who decides that he wants to travel and see the Discworld. One day, Twoflower packs up his luggage and sets sail to Ankh-Morpork. Now, Twoflower is very naïve and doesn’t realise that the Agatean Empire and Ankh-Morpork are two very different places. In the Empire, there is a vast amount of gold, which means that each of its citizens is very rich compared to the people of Ankh-Morpork. Thus, when Twoflower turns up with a magical suitcase full of gold, he gets a few strange and unfriendly looks. Twoflower is the first ever tourist to Ankh-Morpork and the ruler of the city has to keep him safe, otherwise he’ll feel the wrath of the Agatean Empire. To keep Twoflower safe, the ruler of Ankh-Morpork appoints Rincewind as his guide. However, the task is not an easy one, as the wizard and the tourist have to flee the city because of a fire started by Twoflower, setting them on a magical and hilarious journey!

I’ve wanted to read a Terry Pratchett’s novel for a while now but I never really knew where to start! I was thinking of reading his latest novel Dodger, which I think is the thirty-ninth novel in his Discworld series. However, after some advice, I decided to start at the very beginning of Pratchett’s extensive series with The Colour of Magic and I’m glad I did, because this book was great!

My favourite part about the novel was its humour and its apparent randomness! After reading some reviews of the book, I noticed that not everyone enjoyed this. However, for me, I thought this was great and made the book extremely fun to read. In addition, the novel is left on a great cliff-hanger making me want to read the next novel in the series.

All in all, this was a really fun and entertaining novel and I can’t wait to read more novels from the Discworld series. Hopefully one day I’ll have read them all but I don’t think that will be any day soon! I would suggest this book to anyone who is a fantasy fan or anyone who is a fan of fairy-tale stories. Fans of Hank Quense's work will also love this novel as they both have that humorous, quirky feel to them!

For author’s website click here.