La Huitième Couleur

I love Ricewind story and I loved plentiful allusions to nerd culture of the 80s, but it almost reads like a really good Discworld fanfic than a Discworld book.

The storyline was scattered and it felt like three or four short-stories stitched together (by a genius).

I loved re-reading it, but it truly shows how amazing other works of Pratchett are.

Imagine dragons!

Nun habe ich also mein erstes Scheibenwelt-Buch gelesen. Ich las es auf englisch, und das hat sich als Problem herausgestellt. Obwohl mein Englisch eigentlich nicht schlecht ist, hatte ich hier doch einige Probleme mit dem Verständnis. Viel zu viele Wörter kannte ich nämlich überhaupt nicht. Das hat den Lesespaß ein bisschen getrübt. Wobei ich nicht weiß, ob das überhaupt alles reguläre englische Wörter waren, oder ob T.P. sich die nur ausgedacht hat. Ich werde auf jeden Fall dranbleiben, weil ich skurrile Welten mag. Vielleicht lese ich den nächsten Band der Reihe aber mal auf deutsch.

This is the first of Pratchett's books I've read. He has an absurd yet clever sense of humour that I rather appreciate.

I almost didn't want to re-read this one because it is so overshadowed in my mind by the series it would spawn. It's weirdly structured and unfocused - more like four sequential short stories than a novel - but it's still an incredible romp across the freshly imagined Discworld (and beyond).

Many people say that this is the worst Discworld novel to start with, because Sir Terry had not yet truly come into his own.

That may be, but without much other exposure to his writing, this is perfectly enjoyable! Just because it gets better, does not mean this is bad.

Listened to the shiny new audiobook, and the narration was quite good (though not entirely obvious it’s entirely different people narrating footnotes and a certain character).

I enjoyed my second reading much more than my initial introduction to Discworld years ago.

Being the first Discworld book, The Color of Magic is vastly different in many ways from the books that follow it. The characters of Rincewind and Twoflower are not as well defined as they would later become in the series and the Discworld itself is also still an idea in its infancy.

This doesn't mean that Sir Terry Pratchett's humor is any less hilarious though. The dialog is witty and filled with puns and innuendos that you might only catch on a second or third read-through, and the story is pretty well written from beginning to end.

Reading The Color of Magic after the passing of Sir Terry Pratchett really makes me both sad and happy, sad that such a wonderful writer and person passed away, and happy that he gave us one of the most enduring universes in all of literature.