A comedy fantasy; didn’t see that coming, though I was thoroughly intrigued to hear that such a book existed. As a fan of both fantasy and comedy this seemed right up my alley.

            And so here is the love child of those two genres: The Color of Magic the first book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and I must say I am rather impressed.

            The Color of Magic starts off as the city of Ankh Morpork sits in a mass of flames while two men are found running from the carnage. They are stopped by a few soldiers who are eager to hear the tale of what happened.

            What follows is only half of the tale, describing the events leading up to Ankh Morpork’s destruction. After that we follow our two protagonists; Rincewind the failed wizard and Twoflower, a tourist who doesn’t believe anything could ever go wrong, into the land of the disc. Now this may be hard to understand but the disc world is a flat, circular hunk of rock sitting on top of four giant space elephants that in turn, are standing on top of a giant space turtle that is hurtling through space to destinations unknown. Now that is what I call hard to picture. However I thoroughly enjoy the fact that Great A’tuin (The space turtle) is the only being in the universe that truly knows where it is going.

            Rincewind and Twoflower’s adventures take them through forests of talking trees, a civilization that lives upside down, and to the very edge of the Discworld itself.

            Terry Pratchett does a wonderful job of balancing comedy and action, which is something I didn’t expect him to pull off. When I first started it I figured it would be nothing more than a series of fantasy oriented jokes, but no, he manages to create a meaningful story that in many areas puts you in suspense, intrigue and magic. I remember one scene in particular where the main characters and a barbarian are fighting off an ancient octopus like monster in the depths of a dungeon. The way it was written is like any other serious fantasy and I found myself glued to the page for the action, instead of the comedy. But the comedy fits in perfectly, and it never takes you out of the story, or if it does, then it is intentional.

            I only have a few quarrels with this book. First, I was able to blaze through it rather quickly and that was with very little time to read. Another problem is that because it is a comedy, Terry Pratchett will use the easy way out of a situation. By that I mean by backing the characters into a corner, sometimes against impossible odds, he will use the easy way out because, well, it is funny. This isn’t bad, but sometimes I wish he had taken the harder route.

            I definitely recommend this to all fantasy fans, it is a refreshing way to look at the genre. But I also recommend this to comedy fans as well; they may not appreciate it as much as fantasy fans, but it is a joy to read regardless.