Pratchett's Color Is Less Than Magical
The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
What is the opposite of a guilty pleasure? It is a question that has been haunting me of late. Sometimes (such as when I try to read Lord Jim) I worry that the word may be classic.For me, Terry Pratchett's works--especially his Rincewind books--are becoming the opposite of a guilty pleasure. I should like Pratchett. And sometimes I do. He reminds me of Milan Kundera, of Douglas Adams, of Joseph Heller, of Kurt Vonnegut--all authors that I love. He writes fantasy, one of my favorite genres. He's funny and satirical. So why am I constantly disappointed in his works?
The Colour of Magic is the most recent book of his that I've read and been disappointed in. I try to tell myself that I like it, but I just can't. It has its enjoyable moments. It has its laugh lines. But when I closed the book after the last page, I was left thinking, "What just happened and what was the point?"
The Colour of Magic reads like a series of short stories that were published separately and then strung together for the sake of publication in a novel format. Pratchett manages to pull them together by the use of a game between the gods where Fate and Luck (though she is never named as such. She is called merely "the Lady.").
Ultimately, that is my complaint with the Rincewind books that I have read. They lack an overriding plot, the main character is merely a feather in the wind who never changes nor develops, and the story is suborned by the humorous anecdotes.
The book is funny. If you can ignore the lack of cohesiveness or character development, you'll get plenty of opportunities to laugh. Pratchett pokes fun at a wide variety of topics.
This is also the book that introduces Rincewind, a sort-of wizard who has been expelled from the Unseen University at Ankh-Morpork. He is the consummate coward who is constantly saving the world and being heroic through no effort of his own. This book also introduces the luggage--a character in its own right who travels through many of Pratchett's books. Death also makes several appearances, though he is less humorous and more whiny than in Pratchett's other Discworld novels.
Pratchett also makes use of a lot of standard fantasy fare, serving them with a different perspective in a way that is both disturbing and side-splittingly funny. The dragons of the world are those created by the imaginations of their riders and woe to the rider that is knocked unconscious while flying his mount. The dryads are to be avoided it is hard to tell who should be trusted and who should not.
Pratchett is also clever in the creation of the mythos of Discworld. He provides no maps, stating that it is a world that cannot be mapped by mere paper and ink. He borrows liberally from Earth mythologies and shows what a world would be like if they were true.
I know Pratchett has become classic reading material. And he really does do all the things that I love in an author. Nonetheless, I would recommend this to someone only if they borrowed it from the library and were not looking for a masterpiece. The Colour of Magic is amusing and has its memorable moments. It provides a good background to his other Rincewind novels. But it is nothing to write home about or keep one up at night reading.
