Showing posts with label The Color of Magic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Color of Magic. Show all posts

Thursday, July 27, 2023

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

The Color of Magic (Discworld, #1)

Originally Posted to GoodReads: July 25, 2016

I really and sincerely do not know what I just read... like, I know what happened. I know I read The Color of Magic. I know that a series of events took place in the book. I could tell you what that series of events was, probably even in order. I could not tell you what the point of it was. I could not tell you the motivation behind the events other than this: "Apparently Fate wants Rincewind and Twoflower dead... for some reason, which no one gets to know."

I feel like The Color of Magic tried too hard to be The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I enjoyed Hitchhiker's. I could follow Hitchhiker's. Hitchhiker's makes sense. The Color of Magic just doesn't hang together, in my opinion. I just... what? Why? Huh?

This thing happened. This other thing happened. There was some bit of world-building in each area. There was increasingly weird world-building elsewhere. There were asides with "gods" and semi-imaginary dragons, and then this alien water-troll thing. And the day is saved because sapient pearwood... except not, apparently. And then... the end of Divergent before that was even a thing... And I just can't.

Also, apparently octarine is yellow-green or something.

My original plan was to go ahead and read the entire Discworld series but... that's no longer on my to-do list. Re-gifting this travesty of a book to someone who will enjoy it definitely is, though.

A Note From Present Me

It has come to my attention that reading Discworld in order is a bad idea. Instead one ought to read certain storylines? I don't know, but I will eventually be reading the Death arc... at some point in the future.