The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett

The Colour of Magic - which is really half of a complete story, along with its sequel, The Light Fantastic - is where Discworld, and the real celebrity of Terry Pratchett, all began. He'd written a few books before this, but the Discworld series is the true cause of his enduring fame. Why "Discworld"? Because the stories set on a world shaped like a disc, of course! (Mind you, one of the footnotes for which Pratchett is famed implies that it may have been supposed to have been a pizza...) As a long-time fan of the series who has only recently returned to read this book again, one thing that stands out is just how long the story takes to get into ...  Read the complete review

I’ve been quite the fan of Science Fiction novels ever since I was a young teenager, and one of my favourite series of books is the Discworld novels written by Terry Pratchett. Although I’ve read countless of the books, it came as a bit of a shock to find I hadn’t actually read the very first book in the series, The Colour Of Magic. As soon as I realised this I had to remedy the situation and I have this very day finally managed to read it, and now I’m going to share my thoughts on it with you. ---About Discworld--- On the back of a giant space turtle stand four enormous elephants, on whose shoulders rest a flat circular planet that from now on will ...  Read the complete review

The world is round. I haven't personally travelled it's circumference or employed any other scientific means to prove it myself, but it seems a reasonable theory and appears to makes sense so I'm quite happy to go along with it until a better one comes along. But there was a time, in a less enlightened age, when the powers that be decided that the world was, in fact, flat and that travelling too far in any one direction would result in falling off the edge. I only mention this because I wonder how they would have reacted if they had also been told that this flat Earth was supported on the backs of four giant elephants who, in turn, were standing on the back ...  Read the complete review

"In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling stars waver and part...See...Great A'Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters....(upon his back)... Berelia, Tubul, Great T'phon, and Jerakeen, the four giant elephants upon whose broad and star-tanned shoulders the Disc of the World rests..." Such is our first view of the astounding Discworld where magic is so plentiful it can spontaneously bring sentience to trees and actually slows down the speed at which sunlight ...  Read the complete review

Back in university one of my housemates introduced me to fantasy novels which I had never thought to read. One such author she recommended I read was Terry Pratchett and told me that he was a British author and wrote very funny books about a fictional place called Discworld. She borrowed me the first Discworld novel entitled ‘The Colour of Magic’ and I began to read it. After reading about ten pages I gave up deciding that I could not stand his style of writing and was extremely confused with the novel already. Well three years later and after reading a few reviews on Terry Pratchett books I decided to give this novel a go again and this is what I ...  Read the complete review