The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett

Published by Corgi Books: London, 1988 (1985).
First published 1983.
Book 1 of the 'Discworld' series.

It has finally happened! I have reread the first Discworld novel! Discworld being, of course, the series of 50-plus fantasy/satire books written by the late Terry Pratchett, composing a huge cast of characters that grow and develop throughout the years in their own sub-series-within-a-series.

The Colour of Magic introduces the Discworld for the first time: a flat, circular world, balanced on the back of four giant elephants that themselves stand on the back of a giant turtle that swims through space. Pretty much every magical or mythological character you can think of exists on the Discworld somewhere, and as the series progresses, Pratchett uses this fantasy lens to poke fun at various aspects of our reality.

Such a huge undertaking as a 50-plus book series satiring reality through a fantasy lens, however, is likely to be one that finds it rhythm over time, and this holds true here. The Colour of Magic has a bit of what I would call 'Season 1 Weirdness' - the idea that early episodes of a show might not yet have found the 'sweet spot' of what it will become in the future. So, although Death (the character) turns up in this book, he is a little more antagonistic than he will become in later books; although humour and satire is found here, it is at this early stage still focussed more on satirizing fantasy fiction rather than our reality, meaning the jokes feel a little more niche and (oddly) nudity is mentioned more often; and although there are still no 'chapters' (most Discworld books don't have them), the book is broken into four 'sections', each of which feels like a semi-distinct short-story with the same main characters, rather than a strong overall narrative (which the later Discworld books do well!). 

It is still fun, overall, though. We meet the hapless wizard Rincewind for the first time, along with Twoflowers - the first 'tourist' in Discworld's history. We also meet the Luggage, a sentient wooden chest on feet that is insatiable in it's drive to follow it's master. All of these characters will appear in future installments.

The story rambles from the city of Ankh-Morpork, to the temple of Bel-Shamharoth, to the magical dragon-inhabited (kind of) Wyrmberg, to the end of the Disc, without much in the way of an overall plot except following our main characters. And then it ends on a cliff-hanger (literally).

So... not the best Discworld book by a long shot, but certainly a Discworld book none-the-less! Most of the books in the series are relatively stand-alone, so I'm not even sure I would recommend this one as a place to begin reading the series, but for the 'completist', it is an interesting look at where the development of Discworld began.

Completed 24 May 2026.

Previous Book ~ Next Book

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