There are no inconsistencies in the Discworld books; ocassionally, however, there are alternate pasts.
- Terry Pratchett, alt-fan-pratchett
I’ve had a hard time thinking about what to do with spoilers. I think most that might participate in these threads are re-reading the books, but that doesn’t mean we can throw spoilers around. There might be someone who just decided to get into the Discworld universe and who knows if someone does a search two years from now and stumbles on a spoiler.
Obviously, the current book needn’t be discusssed in spoiler boxes. However, hindsight is 20/20 and some part of The Colour of Magic is mostly interesting when compared to what will come later. It’s not written in stone, but I think it should be fair to talk about character development, without using spoiler boxes, whereas plot elements of future books need to be boxed. Someone coming to Discworld now, or later, can’t be surprised to know that Rincewind survives falling off the Disc, since he features in about nine more books. Talking about the way he acts in TCoM as compared to later works should be OK, as long as no plot points are revealed.
It was published in 1983 and it’s not really a surprise that Pterry didn’t quit his day job until 1987. There are some fun parts, but on the whole, it has more of the feeling of many of those Harry Potter and LoTR parodies, which have been poluting our bookstores the last 5 years or so. It’s not a parody of a specific book, but rather all the awful efforts that were made to become a new Tolkien.
The problem with parodies is that the reader needs intimate knowledge of the original work. Pterry realized that he had a good thing going; the Disc can accomodate a lot of plots and a big cast and in later efforts, he starts making parodies that we all can recognize - things in our everyday lives. This is not present in the first books, however. There’s a printing history in my copy of the book, and the first reprint took two years, so TCoM wasn’t a runaway success.
The book contains four major parts plus two prologues: The Colour of Magic, The Sending of Eight, the Lure of the Wyrm and Close to the Edge. It feels as if they weren’t meant to be published together, but rather short stories written for a fanzine, since the stories tend to repeat plot elements, mentioned just a few pages earlier. There are also references of actions taking place off stage, but these feel left out, as if there were more stories and his editor decided to skip them.
If this is the first exposure to Rincewind, I can understand why so many people have a disliking for him. The gutter wizard has absolutely no loveable traits and have little in common with the Rincewind we will meet in later books. A failed wizard, of course, but he gets a lot more humanitarian with time, whereas in this book, he is not much more than a vicous rodent. Ideas about how society works, what Unseen University is like and life on the Disc aren’t very well fleshed out. Character development is poor, the plots are weak and mostly stupid, containing no or little excitement. On the other hand, Pterry takes up a lot of space trying to make the Disc seem logic to our minds. There are lengthy passages about the nature of the Disc, seasons and the like. It’s as if Pterry got an idea and he’s begging the reader to buy into the same idea.
Rincwind is not the only character that get changed a lot. DEATH is the most obvious other example. In TCoM he’s a really malicious character who kills people in spite. I read this back to back with Hogfather and I can help but wonder why Pratchett decided to make Death the most recurring character (he’s in every DW book).
The first part, set in Ankh-Morpork, serves little more purpose than introducing Rincewind and giving us a setting. I think part of it is also making fun of fantasy fans, having Twoflower as the tourist, stand in for the typical reader of fantasy, with Pterry telling us that no, the life of heroes is not really exciting. The description of Ankh-Morpork and its inhabitants is not likeable at all.
The second part, with the soul eater and tree people, is more of the same stuff. “Hey, this is what it would be like if you really dropped in for the adventures in a fantasy boook”. The soul eater is not very scary and the tree people are creepy. We get to meet Hrun, Pratchett’s first attempt of putting a Hero in the story and making fun of the concept of Heroes. I can’t help but seeing Ahnold as Conan in this part.
Wyrmberg, and its dragons, is yet more of the same, and it’s only when we reach Krull that things are picking up. Pratchett’s dry sense of humor and humanitarian streak starts shining through here, and even if the story is flawed, there are elements to it that show us things that will mature in later books. These are also present in the interludes with the Gods, most prominently the Lady and Fate.
I come across as very negative, but TCoM is quite enjoyable in a low key kind of way. Had Pterry kept writing in the same way, I’m sure he’d still work for that nuclear power plant. There are promises of better things to come, but maybe that’s just hindsight.
