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Sep. 12th, 2011 11:50 amOkay so I guess every other Monday around here is going to be PRATCHETT DAY! Kicking things off with The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic; two weeks from now will be Equal Rites and so on.
I know a lot of people when recommending Pratchett books to their friends and acquaintances say 'DON'T START WITH THE COLOR OF MAGIC'. I do this too, because everyone else does it and sometimes I'm susceptible to peer pressure, and it's definitely not as strong as other Discworld books, and sheer anecdotal evidence seems to show that most people don't like it much. But long, long ago, my mom went to the UK on a trip and brought me back The Color of Magic, so that's where I started, and it didn't hurt me any!
There's a poll here about YOUR FEELINGS over at the LJ crosspost if you feel inclined to vote!
The thing about Color of Magic that I had forgotten in the years I had not read it is how much it is composed of VERY DIRECT PARODIES of VERY SPECIFIC THINGS. I don't remember whether I encountered the Pern books before or after Discworld, but man, the bit with Rincewind and Twoflower and the scantily-clad dragonriders is pretty much forty pages of the book straight thumbing its nose at Anne McCaffrey and going 'neener neener your naming conventions are silly!'
And this is totally fine, if you're a reader in the 1980's and you're very familiar with Pern and with Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Conan (I'm pretty sure Hrun is meant to be Conan, which is kind of hilarious given that the very next book on Cohen is in fact Conan) and you're not really expecting much more than a light romp on the theme of 'LOL naive tourist in Fantasyland.' If you have no idea what the conventions are to begin with that the book is mocking, then, like any parody in that vein, it's probably not all that funny. (I had never read a lot of those things in nineteen-ninety-whatever when I first read The Color of Magic, but I had probably read enough parodies of them to get that they were funny anyway...?)
Everyone lumps The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic together so in my head I do it too, but what actually startled me in The Light Fantastic (moving on) is how much closer that book already feels to Discworld-as-we-know-it-later. Having it be long-form helps - it's not a series of short pointed parodies like The Color of Magic, there's some actual legitimate worldbuilding going on, and a couple of tropes that also will be very familiar in later books. A villain whose evil is described as pure blank bureaucratic soullessness: check! Something sinister weakening the boundaries from the Dungeon Dimensions: check! We also get the first Discworld dwarf, who does not feel all that different from later cosmopolitan dwarves, and the first Discworld trolls, who do, but that is retconned away.
I also think Rincewind has kind of suffered in later books from what TVTropes would clal Flanderization - he does not actually come off all that badly in The Light Fantastic, and in retrospect it's kind of a shame that he gets relegated to quivering potato fetishist. Thoughts?
Other notes: The Color of Magic has a terrified water nun and a sexy dragonlady in straps of leather. The Light Fantastic has Bethan, rescued-sacrifice-turned-common-sensicle-girlfriend-to-an-eighty-something-superhero, and Herenna the lady bounty hunter, who explicitly wears very sensible clothes with no leather about her except for some equally sensible boots. It's not great, but it is an improvement! The Color of Magic also has a couple of mildly homophobic jokes related to the wizards that I never noticed before and which I will have to keep an eye out for to see if they continue or go away.
I know a lot of people when recommending Pratchett books to their friends and acquaintances say 'DON'T START WITH THE COLOR OF MAGIC'. I do this too, because everyone else does it and sometimes I'm susceptible to peer pressure, and it's definitely not as strong as other Discworld books, and sheer anecdotal evidence seems to show that most people don't like it much. But long, long ago, my mom went to the UK on a trip and brought me back The Color of Magic, so that's where I started, and it didn't hurt me any!
There's a poll here about YOUR FEELINGS over at the LJ crosspost if you feel inclined to vote!
The thing about Color of Magic that I had forgotten in the years I had not read it is how much it is composed of VERY DIRECT PARODIES of VERY SPECIFIC THINGS. I don't remember whether I encountered the Pern books before or after Discworld, but man, the bit with Rincewind and Twoflower and the scantily-clad dragonriders is pretty much forty pages of the book straight thumbing its nose at Anne McCaffrey and going 'neener neener your naming conventions are silly!'
And this is totally fine, if you're a reader in the 1980's and you're very familiar with Pern and with Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Conan (I'm pretty sure Hrun is meant to be Conan, which is kind of hilarious given that the very next book on Cohen is in fact Conan) and you're not really expecting much more than a light romp on the theme of 'LOL naive tourist in Fantasyland.' If you have no idea what the conventions are to begin with that the book is mocking, then, like any parody in that vein, it's probably not all that funny. (I had never read a lot of those things in nineteen-ninety-whatever when I first read The Color of Magic, but I had probably read enough parodies of them to get that they were funny anyway...?)
Everyone lumps The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic together so in my head I do it too, but what actually startled me in The Light Fantastic (moving on) is how much closer that book already feels to Discworld-as-we-know-it-later. Having it be long-form helps - it's not a series of short pointed parodies like The Color of Magic, there's some actual legitimate worldbuilding going on, and a couple of tropes that also will be very familiar in later books. A villain whose evil is described as pure blank bureaucratic soullessness: check! Something sinister weakening the boundaries from the Dungeon Dimensions: check! We also get the first Discworld dwarf, who does not feel all that different from later cosmopolitan dwarves, and the first Discworld trolls, who do, but that is retconned away.
I also think Rincewind has kind of suffered in later books from what TVTropes would clal Flanderization - he does not actually come off all that badly in The Light Fantastic, and in retrospect it's kind of a shame that he gets relegated to quivering potato fetishist. Thoughts?
Other notes: The Color of Magic has a terrified water nun and a sexy dragonlady in straps of leather. The Light Fantastic has Bethan, rescued-sacrifice-turned-common-sensicle-girlfriend-to-an-eighty-something-superhero, and Herenna the lady bounty hunter, who explicitly wears very sensible clothes with no leather about her except for some equally sensible boots. It's not great, but it is an improvement! The Color of Magic also has a couple of mildly homophobic jokes related to the wizards that I never noticed before and which I will have to keep an eye out for to see if they continue or go away.
