The Color of Magic
| The Color of Magic | ||||||||||||
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Hardcover - UK - 1st edition. |
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The Color of Magic, spelled The Colour of Magic in the UK, is a comedic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett and the first book in the Discworld series, published in 1983.
Contents
Personal
| Own? | No. |
| Read? | Audiobook read by Nigel Planer |
| Finished | June 2017 |
I first picked this book up because my girlfriend at the time bought it. She was a huge fan of Good Omens and wanted to read more books by Pratchett. I didn't have a chance to read much of it, and, finding the first couple pages dull, didn't read any further. Later, my co-worker Paul, who is a huge Pratchett fan and had read every one of the Discworld books, continued to rave about him. Later still, I decided to give the book another chance and listened to an audiobook recording. It was funny, but not great.
Review
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Overall: |
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— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- Overall, the book is funny. There are a lot of small jokes, ironic jokes, plays on tropes, etc. I chortled many times. Pratchett makes some hilarious descriptions.
- Basing the world on real-life myths is a staple of fiction, but using the most ridiculous myths, like that the earth is supported by four giant elephants riding a huge turtle, was genius!
- The way Pratchett bases magic on scientific principles is pretty cool.
- The description of the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth, talking about all objects based around nine minus one and the square root of 64 was funny because it so clearly jabs at the stupid taboos of religions.
- Death is a hilarious character.
Bad
- I don't care much for childish silly humor, and there was a fair amount of it with Twoflower and his trunk.
- The book becomes rather hard to follow in the later portion when the characters are jumping between dimensions and the time line gets jumbled up.
- If sapient pearwood is nearly extinct, entirely magic-proof, and extremely valuable, how does a middle-class wizard like Twoflower have a trunk made out of it?
- I didn't care much for the ending which leaves a lot of loose ends.
Ugly
- Nothing
Cover Art
The first edition UK hard cover depicts a scene in the book, but I don't care much for the art style, and graphically, I find there is too much going on.
The UK paperback is a less-cluttered version of the original art. I still don't care for the art, but I like the layout more.
The UK special edition. Quite boring, really.
I think this is the US hard cover. The psychedelic art nicely depicts the turtle, elephants, and flat Discworld, with what appears to be, an octarine lens flare.
The North American paperback cover is graphically pleasant, but an awful representation of the book. The modern suitcase does not fit at all.
An earlier US mass market cover. It depicts the imaginary dragon escape scene. Nice color usage, but the dragon looks goofy and the characters look too silly.
The US mass market cover is just as bad, although, I like the Discworld stickers on the suitcase.
Unknown region, appears to be US, but uses UK spelling. This is my favorite cover. It plays on Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, but uses a turtle and four elephants.
Unknown region. The characters and luggage are fitting. And although the woodblock art is quite skilled, I don't like the style for a book cover.
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