Book Club / Book Bingo: The Color of Magic

The Color of Magic is the first book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The book is about Rincewind, who is kind of a wizard, and Twoflower, a tourist who comes to Ankh-Morporhk to experience another side of the Discworld. Through a series of events caused primarily by Twoflower's Luggage and naïveté, the two men are basically thrown into several crazy adventures, one right after another.

You guys are probably wondering why I've been reading so many series books lately even though I completed that portion of my bingo scorecard: I have a ton of series on my To-Be-Read list! I'm focusing a lot this year on just finishing books I've already started and checking off some of those that have been sitting around my house...and so far, it's going fantastically!

(picture taken from Goodreads)

First Impression: This book is vaguely humorous at the beginning, although some of it is lost in explanation, I think. I've heard that Discworld is a really great series, but so far, I'm just confused. Everything is set within a context that I don't understand yet, and I find the world at once intriguing and off-putting. Hopefully this will get better for me. I keep having the feeling that it will be much more enjoyable once I understand the context.

Conclusion: This book was not at all what I expected from the description on the back! I never fully understood the context, for one thing. Pratchett never actually explains Discworld; you learn things only on a "need-to-know" basis. I thought it would be from Twoflower's point-of-view, but it was third-person omniscient with a primary focus on Rincewind. This made a big difference, because Twoflower, as the tourist in the duo, wouldn't have understood a lot of what was happening to and around the characters. Also, people kept describing it to me as humorous before I read it, but it made me muse more than laugh. It seemed...nonchalant, for lack of a better term. But this book was a great mix of realism and fantasy! Okay, it was pretty much all fantasy, but Pratchett did a fantastic job drawing me in and convincing me that Discworld is real! My main complaint is the author's transitions. I'm sure they were there somewhere, but it really felt like the characters just jumped from one thing to the next at breakneck speed. This was the same issue at the end. Pratchett ended an action scene with "The End" and then wrote a quick few pages just to let the reader know whether or not Rincewind died. If the books in this series were longer, I wouldn't dedicate the time to them, but since they're so short, I'll probably read the next one. I've been told Pratchett's writing style changes for the better as he goes on.

This book was my third "TBR Pile" choice for the 2014 Book Bingo Challenge. Join me as I read more books that have been sitting around sad and unread!