My First Experience with Terry and it was a Good One. (The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: katygriff

Product:	The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
Date:	13/12/05 (138 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Extremely Funny.

Disadvantages: Extremely Confusing.

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 thought.

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What is the book about?

(Reading from the back of the book)
Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place which might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Certainly it refuses to succumb to the quaint notion that universes are ruled by pure logic and the harmony of numbers.

But just because the Disc is different doesn’t mean that some things don’t stay the same. Its very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the arrival of the first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land. But if the person charged with maintaining that survival in the face of robbers, mercenaries and, well, Death, is a spectacularly inept wizard, a little logic might turn out to be a very good idea.

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Things you Should Know:

Number of pages – 287 (paperback).
Price - £6.99 from Amazon.
Author – Terry Pratchett.
Publisher – Corgi.

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Main Characters:

Twoflower – The tourist who has disrupted the people on the Disc and who has such an enthusiastic look at life he wants to see everything an everyone. He has more money than anybody has ever seen, has a strange little picture box with a person and lizards in and also a snapping luggage case.

Rincewind – The wizard who is charged with keeping Twoflower alive and out of trouble but always manages to find trouble. He calls himself a wizard but he actually knows one spell which everybody knows so he is easily manipulated.

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Verdict:

This book is very hard going at first and to be honest I nearly gave up with reading it again but then when I got past the first thirty pages the book suddenly became interesting and intelligent and funny. In my opinion the first thirty pages are very boring and just confuse the reader by bringing in too much description straight away and too many characters that I cannot actually see have a great point in the novel. Pratchetts writing style seems tedious and uninteresting and does not keep the readers attention. Me and my sister both felt that the first thirty pages should have just been skipped and we would recommend most people to skim read them and not take it that they determine what the rest of the novel is like.

Apart from that little complaint I really enjoyed the novel and found it to be extremely laugh out loud funny. I am still going to say that Pratchetts writing style is a bit annoying to read because he seems to drift off the point quite a bit. At times it is hard to read because he will put random sentences in that make no sense to the story at all but because this actual novel is so random, I can forgive him for it. The story he has come up with is one of magic and strangeness like I have never read before and it kept me entertained till the end.

Like I said above this novel is laugh out loud funny and this is mainly because of most of the characters. Yes I know I have only mentioned two characters but this book has so many I would be here all day mentioning them. Rincewind is hilarious because although he is a wizard he only knows one spell so is pretty useless and he gets himself into some situations that you cannot help but think you dumb person. The character who amuses me the most is Twoflower and his willing to see good in everything that life throws at him. Even when faced with great danger, Twoflower just sees the bright side and does what most people would do and takes a picture.

Although the book is predominantly about the above two characters you meet many more on their travels including my favourite Kring. Kring is a talking sword who made me laugh so hard because he has the biggest ego and says things such as ‘I have had a multidimensional existence’ and constantly mocks Rincewind. My other favourite character is Death who is written so well that you actually get chills when he appears in the book trying to claim Rincewind but not doing as well as he hoped.

One thing I do like about this fantasy book is that there are so many mystical beasts that pop up including trolls and dragons and I like reading thing that are out of the ordinary. The descriptions of everything are done well but not to the point that you get annoyed with them. The one thing that I will say about this book though is that you do have to read every single word or you do tend to get a bit confused and this includes descriptions. Pratchett does tell you a tiny bit about the Disc in the first few pages of the novel, things like the fact that the directions on the Disc are called Hubward on Rimward but also Turnwise and Widdershins. As you can imagine all these new words can get confusing so I would not recommend skimming any pages.

In conclusion I think that I would recommend this novel as it is a very good read and hugely entertaining. Although the writing style in my opinion is very hard to get used to I find that you can still enjoy the story and the characters are so wacky and wonderful that you cannot help but have a little laugh while reading it and with the novel only being 287 pages long you do not get bored and are left wanting the next instalment of Discworld.

The Colour of Magic gets four stars from me because the beginning is a bit boring and the writing style is not really what I am used to but I am looking forward to reading more of his novels.

Thanks for reading.

xxx

Summary: Makes you Want to Read Another.