Colour of Magic

As I've previously mentioned, I've read Terry Pratchett before. In fact, I've actually read another book in the Discworld series before. Granted, I had no idea what the book was and read it solely based off the recommendation of a cute boy in Latin club when I was in high school, but that's entirely beside the point.

That book, Going Postal, was hilarious. I giggled throughout it. I was a huge fantasy buff growing up- my favorite author was, and probably still is Dianna Wynne Jones, and Going Postal reminded me of all of my favorite things of my childhood.

With The Colour of Magic, I expected the same. There were definite good points to this novel. For one thing, I found the dynamic between Twoflower and Rincewind absolutely hilarious. For another, I loved the bits of humor interspersed throughout the entire novel. Finally, I loved that the monster who managed to terrify an entire world was nothing more than a box with teeth and legs.

However, the major thing I felt was missing in this book was a cohesive plot. While Pratchett did a fabulous job of developing his humor and characters, I was often confused as to what the hell was going on. I could tell that there was this fabulous world in his head, a world perched on elephants and turtles, but I had the hardest time picturing anything. It's not that I wanted pages and pages of description either, I just felt that he needed to flesh everything out more concretely. You can definitely tell the difference between this, one of Pratchett's earliest works, and his later novels.

Another thing that I did enjoy is how much it reminded me of other works of fiction and mythology. Perhaps it is because I watched Thor before finishing the latter half of this book, or maybe it's because it's simply because at heart, I'm merely a giant nerd, but this rekindled my great love of mythology. It also reminded me of a podiobook I started quite a while ago, but never finished (I believe it was called Heaven). The delving into mythology has always been something I've liked to read and hear about.

I did enjoy this book, and I'll definitely delve more into his other books. I looked at quite a few reviews of this book before I finally put words to laptop-screen, and almost every one referred to Douglas Adams, who I'm ashamed to say, I've never read before. That's something that's also going to change- immediately.

Okay, well, as soon as I finished the other three books I currently have checked out of the library.

(3/5 stars)