Welcome to the Book Bonfire! Today I intend to tackle the first installment in the 8,000-book Discworld series! So get your stylish Book Bonfire lapel pins ready, we’re going full force on this one. And yes, I’m spelling “color” the filthy American way because I AM a filthy American, and my copy of the book drops the “u”. Suck it.

I’ve only read the first seven Discworld books, and I’ve only paid attention to half of them. I own every single one because I deeply love the idea of Discworld. In practice, though, I tend to glaze over as I read endless Mopey Wizard puns. “NOW TOM,” you might say to me, rudely interrupting I may add. “DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THE DISCWORLD BOOKS JUST GET BETTER AS THEY GO ON? WHY ARE YOU READING THEM IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, ANYWAY? AND FURTHERMORE, Y–” No. Shut up. I don’t care what you have to say on the matter. I read things in chronological order AND I understand that the Discworld books do get better. Through this blog and the writing exercises I assign to myself with all media that I consume, you and I together will meander our way through the many Discworld books. One by one.

The Color of Magic follows Rincewind — a bumbling “wizard” who is only a “wizard” in the sense that he knows exactly one spell, and saying it out loud could be the end of the universe as anyone knows it — and Twoflower — a Discworld tourist with a fascination of all that the planet has to offer. This book is loose jumble of plot points that aren’t very coherent: Ankh-Morpork catches on fire, Hrun the Barbarian rescues and aides Rincewind and Twoflower, Twoflower gets imprisoned in a dragon land, and then Rincewind and Twoflower almost fall off the edge of the world. Literally.

The actual story is completely nonsensical and uninteresting. I stay for the worldbuilding, which is genius. All the sidebars about the various lands and countries of the Disc, such as Krull or the Ramtops, and all the explanations of how magic works, and the description of ocatarine — the eighth color of the spectrum, and the greasiness that one feels when an area has a particularly strong magic presence — this is all way better than Rincewind and Twoflower running from some duel to the death with an heir to Wyrmburg or whatever the fuck was going on. Most of the entertaining bits come from the dialogue and Rincewind’s abject misery. Resigning himself to the status of failed wizard, he actually has quite a bit of knowledge about the history of magic and how it works.

Again, I’ve only read a small handful of these books and none seemed to progress much further in their sophistication than The Color of Magic other than, possibly, actual coherent plots. I remain unconvinced that I’ll ever truly fall in love with the series, but I look forward to being proven wrong as I use this blog to actually motivate me into reading anything past Pyramids.

BOOK BONFIRE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS!

The novel spends more time in Ankh-Morpork than any other location. What purpose do you see the river-split city serving in setting up the Discworld and the people that populate it?
Fantastic question! I’ll field this one! You see, Ankh-Morpork is like the King’s Landing of Discworld. It’s full of murder, rape, and incest. ALSO, it’s the Disc’s key location. It will be the major setting for both the City Watch stories and the Unseen University stories. Among other things. I think.

OK, let me go into this question with a narrower scope. Let’s travel back to 1983 and say that this is the only Discworld novel that has been released thus far. First I’m like “oh man, this is kinda funny but it’s all over the place and if he writes another 40 books I hope they’re more cohesive”, and then the second thing that comes to mind is that the Ankh-Morpork location was the most interesting of all the other locations. Because (surprise!), cities are inherently more interesting anyway. It works that way in reality, that’s just the facts, ma’am. And I hope future books will spend most of the time in Ankh-Morpork (they kinda won’t, but oh well).

Why do you think the story separates into different tales where it does? Why do you think the story does away with chapter or section breaks within the individual tales? Given this, how does the overall structure affect your reading of the story?
This is because Pratchett couldn’t fill 200 pages with one fully fleshed out plot. He was focused mainly on parodying fantasy tropes. I don’t care why there aren’t chapter breaks within the actual separated stories, because who cares? As far as I remember, all the other Discworld books I’ve read don’t have chapters in them.

The overall structure is fine. I like it split up this way, because if the story is going to meander around, I at least like to know when the largest meanders will happen! Thank you for your question.

Why do you think the novel features the two main characters it does — that is, a one-spell, down-and-out wizard and an idealist tourist? How do these characters relate to the fantasy genre as a whole and also work against it?
The Dream Team of Rincewind and Twoflower? And you’re going to ask me why the story features these two as the main characters? Go suck a real life dick.

Rincewind is the archetypal fantasy character with a twist, and that’s all there really is to it. He allows the reader to learn the inner workings of the Disc and its magic system while simultaneously letting him/her laugh at his bumbling incompetence. Twoflower is the lens of the audience — a literal tourist with tourist clothes and a camera. He knows nothing about the Disc and he gets all his information in real time along with the reader. A catalyst for the world-building.

They work against the fantasy genre by subverting it. What an odd question to ask!

Does The Color of Magic have an antagonist?
Trick question! The Disc itself is the antagonist, throwing all manner of danger and obstacle in the faces of our two hapless heroes! Rimfalls and dragonriders and giant fires and barbarians!

If this is a copout answer, then it’s either the gods playing dice with the universe OR it’s Death himself, who keeps popping up to try to kill Rincewind. By the way, Rincewind’s ability to cheat Death by accident throughout the book is funny. Death is the best character.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Final Thoughts? I hope this ends up being the absolute worst book in the entire series. I’m looking forward to surpassing Book 7 and beyond, even if it takes me twenty years! And it just might, because I’m reading my weight in all these Star Wars books lately apparently. That shit’s eating away at my life for sure.