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The Color of Magic

The Color of Magic

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: excellent read
Review: My introduction to Pratchett, and very possibly one of the best books I've ever read. Pratchett has a very unique sense of humour, and his writing is excellent. I will be reading the sequel, The Light Fantastic, shortly.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Enjoyable, quick read
Review: I've been introduced to the Discworld, and I think I'm going to enjoy it. It was a really hard book to put down, but that's not much of a problem with a 200 page book. Funny, imaginative, and fun would describe this book best. I look forward to reading the rest! My only gripe is that it's hard to spend $6.99 for each book since they are digested so quickly...but hey, it's worth it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Color of a good novel
Review: I extremly enjoyed this humerous novel. I am a veteran reviewer and its hard to come by a novel this good. It made me roll on the ground laughing and has a good enough plot to keep the serious reader content, 5 stars

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A terrific way to waste an afternoon
Review: As everyone knows, the "color of magic" is octarine -- the eighth color in the spectrum, visible only to wizards, like Rincewind of Ankh-Morpork, who's pretty much a failure at his profession (having been mentally invaded at school by one of the Eight Great Spells, which chased all the others out of his head), but who does show a talent for survival. Good thing, too, because the Discworld (which is supported by four great elephants standing on the back of a gigantic sea turtle) is not an easy place to survive in. Then there's Twoflower, a tourist from the Counterweight Continent, possessed of more gold than is good for him (or for anyone else) and a rather vicious piece of ambulatory luggage, whose chances of survival appear rather slim until Rincewind takes on a job as his guide. Pratchett is smack in the best tradition of britcom and any fan of Monty Python and Douglas Adams will be right at home with the author's droll style and witty turns of classic characters. But Pratchett is not only a master of literate parody but a very inventive and original creator of comic fantasy. You probably won't want to read a whole bunch of the books in this series one right after another, though. Rather, treat these tales as you would a box of expensive chocolates, parceling them out gradually and chewing slowly.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant introduction to the Discworld series...
Review: Of course, this being the 1st in the Discworld series, there is no better place to start. Terry Pratchett offers more than just the necessary Fantasy fix for those that enjoy that genre. His humorous points of view regarding the world in general will have you in stitches no matter what genre you prefer to read. Trust me, I translated this to Spanish and gave it to my grandmother to read, she calls me every week to ask when the next translated book from Terry Pratchett will be completed.

Purchase with no fear and enjoy!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: foot off the gas
Review: Not a bad book, but he took his foot off the gas on this one. Coasting with formula is not a good way to write books. Mind you, have moved on from Terry Pratchett to Robert Rankin reciently, much funnier.....

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not the best of Discworld
Review: In general Terry Pratchett's Discworld is the lastest series I have found that is one of my favorite series. This is the first Discworld book but is not the best. (Personally, just so you know I think the best ones take place in Anhk-Morpok). It is good for understanding Discworld. If you don't like this one, give Discworld a second chance.

I seem to be saying what is bad about it but I still think it is great.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The beginning of the Discworld phenomenon
Review: The Colour of Magic is the book that started the whole Discworld phenomenon, way back in 1983. Here, we are introduced for the first time to the craven and inept wizzard Rincewind, and the amazing Luggage (here still belonging to Twoflower, the quintessential tourist from the Counterweight continent), and we are also treated to our first glimpse of the greatest city on the disc, Ankh-Morpork, as it is burning to the ground. Another stock character introduced at this early stage of the discworld saga is Death, and there are also some of the gods of the discworld present: Blind Io, Offler, Fate, and the Lady, among others.
In the unlikely event that there is still someone on this planet who doesn't know what the Discworld is, here is a brief description: The Discworld is a disc (hence the name), carried on the backs of four gargantuan elephants, who in turn are standing on the back of the enormous world turtle, Great A'Tuin, swimming through space. This, of course, is an old mythological idea (best known, perhaps, from Indian mythology) that stands as the basis for the entire incredible world of marvels and wonders that Pratchett has imagined into existence.
One day the hapless tourist Twoflower, Luggage in tow, arrives at the great city of Ankh-Morpork, where he hires a very reluctant Rincewind as guide. Soon, Twoflower happens to introduce the new idea of in-sewer-ants policies to the people of Ankh-Morpork, something which quickly leads to the whole city going up in flames. Escaping from the fiery city, Rincewind and Twoflower, unaware that they are pawns in a divine game played between Fate and the Lady, spend the rest of the book falling into one death-defying adventure after another, until they eventually experience the ultimate fall...
The story doesn't have a unifying thread or theme like Pratchett's later stories. The Colour of Magic is more in the vein of hilarious comedy and parody (Pratchett pays homage to, among other things, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Conan the Barbarian). I'm not a great fan of parody, which is why I didn't like this book quite as much as Pratchett's later efforts. It is, of course, unfair to compare The Colour of Magic to Pratchett's later works, but I still think the more mature and thoughtful style of the later Discworld novels is much to be preferred.
At this early stage, Pratchett hasn't quite found his style yet, naturally enough, which is why Death, for example, is a decidedly more unpleasant character than what he will later evolve into. There are other differences as well, such as the fact that Pratchett uses chapters in this book. But all in all, it's a great read that shows all the promise that Pratchett, over the following 20 years, have more than fulfilled, many times over.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Diskworld!
Review: The Diskworld is a disk-world that is carried by four elephants who stand on top of a huge turtle who travels through space to do something they are still trying to figure out. And there's the Creator, a weird little man, but you can't find him anywhere - except occasionaly.
Sound weird? Sure it does - and its all like that. But in being weird, it's also very funny. Especially the Luggage - a case that has hundreds of little feet, eats anything, and has many compartments and a mind of its own.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good but not Great
Review: Writing a good parody is fiendishly difficult. If you don't believe me, try it yourself. While the fantasy genre overflows with cliches and trite, formulaic writing, an effective satire of it needs to do more than just point out those overused ideas. Such a novel would soon grow boring. And that's the good thing about "The Color of Magic": it isn't satisfied with just making a few lame jokes over and over again. There's at least one new punchline on almost every page. Is it a good punchline? Usually. Many people have compared Pratchett to Douglas Adams. I don't think that he's quite that good in this book, but he comes close. As with Adams, some of the best jokes come during brief diversions that pop up to explore some background point, without any real relevance to the story. And yes, there are a few instances where the joke isn't quite as funny as the author seems to think, but overall the book is well worth reading.


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