Jakers reviewed The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett (Discworld, #1)
Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent novels are consistent number one bestsellers in England, where they have …
I get it, but should have listened to people who said....
3 stars
Content warning Spoilers about the nature of the ending, no details
...it's not the best place to begin the series.
First of all, if you don't like cliffhangers, don't pick this up without getting The Light Fantastic as well. I read both many years ago, and remembered it ending basically out of nowhere, so it wasn't surprising. Even knowing that, I had to google around to make sure my copy of the book hadn't been damaged in some way.
That said, I know that Pratchett is supposed to be kind of a "journey rather than destination" type writer, especially in the early books, and I thoroughly enjoyed the writing. But I can definitely see what people mean when they say it isn't the greatest book to start the series with (I've read that generally the best place to start is the books about The Guard).
It was funny. The writing was clever. But when I put this book next to it's supposed sci-fi analogue (admittedly my favorite series of all time, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) some of the jokes fall flat, Rincewind in particular comes off rather 2-dimensional, and the best parts all involved The Luggage...which does not speak and is about as single-minded a creature as there ever was.
I'm not saying it's bad, far from it. But I wish I'd started with the books that are said to live up to the hype.