The Color of Magic
by Terry Pratchett

List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $2.00
You Save: $5.99 (75%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of The Color of Magic

Book Review: Great beginning to an equally great series!!
Summary: 5 Stars

Discworld is unlike any other place a reader may have visited, even in the wild n' wooly world of science fiction and fantasy. For starters, the entire planet of Discworld is shaped like a LP record (or, for modern readers, a CD or dinner plate): it's flat and round, encircled by the Circle Sea, which flows forever off the edge of the planet. Oh, yes, lest we forget, the whole planet is also carried on the back of four enormous elephants which, in turn are balanced on the back of The Great A'Tuan, the World Turtle who swims slowly through the cosmos on errands of it's own. As an interesting aside, the concept of our Earth being balanced on the back of elephants or turtles is as old as civilization-many creation myths from India had the earth being carried about by these animals.

Such an improbable place would, of course by it's very nature, contain a large concentration of magic, wizards, mages, witches, sorcerers and other magical sort of folks. Our incompetent hero and main character, Rincewind, is himself a wizard, though an exceptionally bad one. While at wizard school (called Unseen University), he snuck a peek at the Great Book of Spells on a dare, and one of the Great Spells leapt out of the book and into his head. All other lesser spells, from opening walnuts to changing the weather or your shape, are too scared to stay in the same head as one of the Great Spells, so Rincewind, while technically a wizard, is doomed to wander around doing card tricks for a living.

Fortunately, however, Rincewind does have a talent for picking up foreign languages, which allows him to translate for an EXTREMELY RICH tourist who comes to town. Twoflower the tourist is unique in that A) he has four eyes B) he's the first tourist the town has ever had and C) he's got a strange sort of treasure chest that follows him around on little tiny legs and seems to be able to give him anything-a change of underwear, a flask of water, or more bars of solid gold than the entire town has seen in it's whole history.

The fun begins when Rincewind, who is street savvy despite being an inacompetent wizard, tries to first steal Twoflower's treasure and then protect the innocent and naïve Twoflower from the danagers of the city (Twoflower, unaware of how much anything costs, offers up a whole bar of gold for a single glass of water, for example). Their adventures take them all over the Disc, from the high mountains at the Hub of the world to the edge of the Circle Sea, all the while as the Great Spell tries to get itself spoken by Rincewind, usually when he's just about ready to die some unusual and terrible death (oh, by the way, since only Death himself may take the soul of a wizard, the hooded figure of Death appears quite a lot in this story, usually when Rincewind is about to die some unusual and terrible death).

Pratchett loves to poke fun at the whole genre of science fiction and fantasy as well as himself and his own characters. More than one ridiculous situation will seem oh-so-familiar to those who are much taken with the genre. The book is worth reading just for the absurd situations that Rincewind and Twoflower find themselves in, as well as the cast of lesser characters who make up the patently motley crew of Discworld.

While not specifically a young adult novel, teen readers will no doubt enjoy the fast pace of the novel as well as the ridiculous situations almost every character finds itself in (as well as the ridiculous characters themselves, like Cohen the Barbarian). Those readers who have read a lot of fantasy/science fiction will enjoy the way that Pratchett pokes fun at the genre itself and the impossible twists in the plot (indeed, in the second book of the series, Rincewind himself falls off the edge of the planet but, no surprise, manages to get back on his feet...)

Highly recommended!! Those who really love this book may want to go onto the second book in the series, "The Light Fantastic" where the futher adventures of Twoflower and Rincewind are documented.

Summary of The Color of Magic

Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent novels are consistent number one bestsellers in England, where they have garnered him a revered position in the halls of parody next to Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen.

The Color of Magic is Terry Pratchett's maiden voyage through the now-legendary land of Discworld. This is where it all begins--with the tourist Twoflower and his wizard guide, Rincewind.

Literature & Fiction Books

• Books > Subjects
• Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Magic & Wizards