Another evening at the Book Bonfire awaits! Today’s topic of discussion is Installment #2 of Terry Pratchett’s lovely Discworld series, The Light Fantastic, a book that’s marginally better than the first one The Color of Magic. Actually, it’s much better. This one was easier to get into.

While The Color of Magic seems to take a bunch of boring fantasy tropes and cobble them together into something that resembles a cohesive story in the right light, The Light Fantastic actually IS a cohesive story with a clear beginning that gets resolved at the end with plenty of events in the middle that actually contributes to the plot. Refreshing! It bodes well for the rest of the series of books, of which I only read nine and paid attention to exactly two!

This was probably my fourth time reading The Light Fantastic and, for the first time, I was able to get through the whole thing without letting my mind wander. That right there is a checkmark in the right box! However, it was tough to get through. Pratchett packs the whole thing so full of jokes and humorous side conversations that it becomes easy to lose the threads of the plot continuity. There is one part where Rincewind spends about 30 pages inside of Octavo (the magic book which contains Seven of the Eight Great Spells, the last one being stuck in Rincewind’s head) as a diversion before he wakes up back where the story left off. That kind of thing was scarce, though, as well as other minor tangents, which was a relief. It was the weakest component of the first book. I almost called it a “novel”, but I think that would be giving something like this too much credit!

There isn’t a substantial amount of character development with Rincewind and Twoflower, and that to me shows that these two were either firmly established in Pratchett’s head already before Book 1, or they are just thin characters. The Light Fantastic solidifies these two as pretty one-note, with Rincewind continuing to be a wretched sad sack and Twoflower continuing to be a naïve optimist. However, both are excellent foils for one another, and it’s fun to see how much patience they both have with each other. Twoflower is all like “HEY THAT ROCK OVER THERE IS SPLENDID” and Rincewind is all like “That’s a bird’s nest.” I’m no Terry Pratchett, but that’s an excellent impression. Save that one in your back pocket.

The best character by far is the Luggage; sapient pearwood that runs along on hundreds of little legs toward its master wherever he may be. It opens up its lid and sometimes it’s gold and jewels. Sometimes it’s fresh laundry with a lavender sent. Sometimes it’ll just eat people who gets in its way. The Luggage is a badass and it’s the best pet you’ll ever have in your life.

I don’t know much yet about how Rincewind/Twoflower or the wizards of Unseen University will be fleshed out in the coming Rincewind books, but I’m looking forward to seeing more of the wizards and their scholarly shenanigans. I’d like to stick around Ankh-Morpork though. All this bandying about the Disc gets tiresome when it’s aimless.

Good book! Onto some very uninspired questions!

BOOK BONFIRE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS!

In such a magical world why are so many surprised at the powers of the Luggage?
For one thing, nobody seems to know anything about anything on the Discworld. Even the wizards at various levels seem pretty clueless about the magical goings-on when push comes to shove. It’s a mystery where Twoflower got the Luggage in the first place, almost like it was some black market shit where naïve little Twoflower didn’t know what he was getting into.

Perhaps the Luggage is so unique and unbelievable that no one can believe it, if you can believe it! Always eating people. Always taunting people with treasure. Always producing lavender-scented, fresh laundry when examined more closely. Always endlessly running along on its creepy hundred legs. Nothing else on the Disc is quite like it. Perhaps the magic of the World of Disc operates on a controlled set of predictable rules that the magic of the Luggage subverts completely? Perhaps the Luggage is from DiscMars. We’ll never know, will we? Stupid question!

Describe some of the fantasy clichés and parodies in The Light Fantastic and how they compare with tropes.
The wizard school is full of wizards! That’s obvious, and they parody wizards by being not very wizardly. They act like a bunch of tenured snobs who don’t know their asses from a magical hole in the ground. Then there’s Rincewind, that sad sack piece of shit. He doesn’t know anything except that one Great Spell that’s lodged firmly within that soft, little noggin of his. A failed wizard, but I think he still wears is wizard clothes. Maybe his mom does all his wizard laundry.

Death isn’t specific to this book, as I believe he appears in every Discworld novel, but he’s always a fun, jolly fellow to keep tabs on. In The Light Fantastic he makes two appearances. One, he gets summoned by wizards when he’s in the middle of a party and only appears to be ever-so-slightly inconvenienced by it. Two, he plays bridge in his own home with the other Horsemen and Twoflower and he’s not getting the hang of it very well. Death is the most endearing character on the Disc and Mort was easily the best Discworld book out of the first nine.

Cohen the Barbarian is the brutally obvious one. Based on Conan the Barbarian and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s oily pectoral muscles, Cohen the Barbarian’s characters subverts this by being old as shit, wiry and skinny, and without any teeth whatsoever. That’s about the extent of the parody, although he continues to be an intimidating badass among his people. Which is funny! This book is funny.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Light Fantastic was leagues better than The Color of Magic if only because there was a solid narrative all the way through! I like it when my books have solid narratives all the way through! Beginnings, middles, endings, all those beats.