Having never read the Discworld series but having heard so much about the series, I decided I needed to finally take the plunge. My question after finishing the first book of the series is, what took me so long? It’s a great bit of science fiction and fantasy combined with quirky humor that is very entertaining.

The Color of Magic is the first book of the series. Discworld is a flat disc traveling through space on the back of a giant turtle. Rincewind is a wizard who lives in one of the cities, but hasn’t had much success as a wizard. He’s been expelled from the Unseen University at Ankh-Morpork and spends most days trying to survive the easiest way possible. When Twofeathers turns up at the tavern Rincewind hangs around in, the wizard is tasked with escorting the tourist searching for adventure. Tourism is not a thing in Ankh-Morpork, and Twofeathers is a mystery to everyone in the city. He’s wealthy and throws around cash in a way that attracts the attention of a variety of the criminal element. This is what both intrigues and alarms the authorities; they can see the potential fortune tourism could bring to them, but they are also afraid that if anything bad happens they’ll lose out.

The story is a series of vignettes as Twofeathers unknowingly gets himself into trouble again and again, and Rincewind must figure out a way to get them out of trouble. Rincewind has extreme anxiety, but the naivety of Twofeathers is exasperating at times. Oh, and Twofeathers has luggage that is… interesting. It follows him around on its own feet and has something of a mind of its own, in addition to being indestructible. Death also appears in the story, and it’s kind of like the Grim Reaper, hanging around waiting to pluck souls out of their dying bodies. It appears at several different times and is quite the character.

As Rincewind and Twofeathers make their way around Discworld, they end up in a variety of funny situations. Pratchett has a great sense of humor and plays on satire and irony quite a bit throughout the book. Twofeathers wants to find adventure and has a problem with being impulsive and not considering the downside of something. He’s an eternal optimist, whereas Rincewind sees nearly everything as a potential threat. Nearly every encounter has Twofeathers making people aware of just how much money he is carrying around, making him a target for thieves and con artists. It’s handled in an amusing way, though, which left me laughing throughout the stories. It’s the same type of humor found in the Monty Python sketches I grew up watching. If you like Python, I think you’ll like Pratchett.

Colin Morgan narrates the newest version of the audiobook, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him. He manages to use different recognizable voices for the characters and does a terrific job keeping them all straight. The tone he sets for the story is of someone who is trying to be serious but not succeeding, and that works well with this material.

I felt like The Color of Magic was Pratchett’s attempt to make fun of the many fantasy tropes that existed when the book was first released in 1983. I was never a huge fantasy reader, but I recognized some of the plot devices he uses in The Color of Magic. There were many formulaic books back in the day when it was harder to gain the attention of publishers, so writers had a tendency to stick with what they knew worked. Pratchett is about to take it all in a very different direction, it seems. His characters are entertaining and fun, and the story works to introduce us to this new world.