Terry Pratchett's The Colour Of Magic

This is the first book in the Discworld series, and the copy I have right now (Copyright 1983; got it from the library) is the 9th edition, if I'm not mistaken. At any rate, the book still looks rather worn... But without further ado, background story and review:

The Discworld is looks like a disc. It revolves on top of four giant elephants (how friction doesn't burn up the hides of those elephants, I don't know. That's fantasy for ya), that in turn, stands on the Great A'Tuin, a very Giant Turtle that sails across the space, towards... well, something (my five readings thus far haven't established what that 'something' is yet, though.).

The Colour Of Magic is quite a lot of fun. It revolves around Twoflower, a tourist to Ankh-Morpork (the main city of the Discworld), his Luggage (made out of magic sapient pearwood, has hundreds of little legs, and is extremely protective of its master) and his hapless guide, the failed wizard Rincewind (the common character and sometimes protagonist in most of the later books), who only knows ONE spell, since that one spell is really, REALLY powerful and prevents him from memorising any other spell (unfortunately, we don't find out what that spell does. Even Rincewind doesn't know what it does, but he knows that major crap would be going down if he finished the incantation, eight words in all). From the other books, Rincewind has a hat that says 'WIZZARD' on it, but in this book, that hasn't been introduced yet.

Twoflower is from the Counterweight Continent, where gold flows EXTREMELY freely in circulation (that doesn't make everybody rich, ya know. They have peasants there. Mostly). The CC is further explored in much more detail in Interesting Times (which is my first Discworld book, and is by far the FUNNIEST book I'd ever come across, and is one of my absolute favourites), and based on that, the CC is mostly China, and some of Japan (because we have massive Tsimo wrestlers in one part). And they have a city called Sum Dim. And they also have the Forbidden City, and terracotta warriors, but they're called the Red Army in this instance. They even have The Art Of War, written by One Tzu Sung. Hahaha.

So anyway, Twoflower is an insurance agent (in Morporkian, there's no such word to describe the word 'insurance', so it's spelled as 'inn-sewer-ants'. And reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits is Morporkian 'echo-gnome-ics', which we know as 'economics'. HAHAHA!). He, being extremely simple and naive and good-natured, gets into trouble, and Rincewind, even though he makes a break for it, is commanded by the Patrician (the ruler of Ankh-Morpork) to follow Twoflower around and keep him alive, since if Twoflower dies, they'd incur the wrath of the CC, which is a massive continent indeed and so, has massive army.

Later on, the CC changes its mind on Twoflower, and orders him assassinated (because if he comes back bearing photos and stories of his travels, well, the CC operates feudally; loads of that in Interesting Times), so Twoflower and the reluctant Rincewind gets bounced around a lot on their adventure. Rincewind even meets Death on several occasions (they pretty much know each other for a while now. Death comes personally for wizards and witches, instead of delegating to lesser minions, as we see in Mort, Death's apprentice of the same name. That book wasn't too bad either). In this book, Death just doesn't come across as characteristic of what he's like in Mort. But this is the first book, so... Death has a soft spot for cats, by the way, and there's no underlying meaning in that statement. He just likes cats. We get that from Mort, as well.

Anyway, back to The Colour Of Magic. Twoflower sells insurance to Broadman, who owns the local bar The Broken Drum, and Broadman proceeds to burn down the bar, and unintentionally, a huge part of the city as well (Broadman doesn't make it though, as we see Death making an appearance prior to the fire-starting). Rincewind and Twoflower manage to get out in time, and proceed to almost be sacrifices for Bel-Shamharoth (a Lovecraftian creature with one eye that eats souls. Bel-Shamharoth, that is, not the eye. They defeat it when Rincewind took a picture and the flash blinded Bel's eye. Eight is Bel's number, by the way, so Rincewind's spell has something to do with Bel. Just that we don't know what it does), get involved in a power struggle in Wyrmberg (with dragons!) and finally, reach the Edge of the Discworld (the people of Krull, who stay near the Edge, want to find out what the gender of the Great A'Tuin's is. We find that out on the first page, but they didn't. So they need two volunteers. Guess who.).

There's also this sub-plot about the Gods playing games using people as game pieces. The two left standing in the book is Fate, and the Lady (her name isn't given, but Interesting Times call her 'The Lady in the Last Chance Saloon'. I don't get it, but apparently Google does. She's Lady Luck.). Fate is controlling everybody else, and the Lady seems to like Rincewind (she also uses him as a piece in Interesting Times.).

By the way, little bit of a continuity quibble. In the chapter 'The Lure Of Wyrmberg', Liessa's name changes to Lianna when she finally catches up to Hrun the Barbarian. Hmm.

I'm glad that The Colour Of Magic is actually revealed to us in the book. Without giving what that colour is away, it's basically a combo, so there. All in all, the book's pretty good (even though the ending's a literal cliff-hanger), but I still find nothing beats Interesting Times.