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Reading Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series makes me smile. Because of his writing I invented the "Smile-O-meter" which measures smiles per book. Pratchett always scores high.

Three years after Terry Pratchett published The Color of Magic, the first Discworld book, he published the second, The Light Fantastic, having decided convincingly that this was a worthwhile project.

Though the action in The Light Fantastic takes over immediately following the events in the first book, Rincewind has fallen off of the edge of the world, this novel seems to gather momentum from a good but somewhat shaky start and proceed with a comic authority. While The Colour of Magic could have been a funny stand alone, Pratchett’s entry with The Light Fantastic seems to usher in a certainty that the Discworld as a multiverse, as a literary institution, has begun and with no end in sight.

Actually, I suppose he could have written a third, making the obligatory trilogy and then moving on to something else, but Pratchett wraps up his story tidily and leaves the fertile soil of Discworld as a fun idea from which more books can be written. (There are over 50 works in publication, and the series is a phenomenon with over 80 million novels sold and in 37 languages. Pratchett himself was knighted in 2009).

So what is all the fuss about? Our heroes Rincewind and Twoflower go on an adventure to save the world, or try to, or accidentally end up in all the right places, or something.

The real hero of the novel, and of the series, is Pratchett himself. It is his narration that amuses, cajoles, and encourages laughter and that keeps the reader’s attention. Playfully, and with wry English humor, Pratchett weaves a fun fantasy story with references to Biblical, classical, and mythical themes as well as modern subjects like Conan the Barbarian.

It is simply, a lot of fun.

*** 2024 reread -

In my earlier review I noted how Pratchett seemed to hit his stride and I noticed that again here. The Colour of Magic was the first Discworld book, but I think that the Discworld series began here.

We get to spend time with Rincewind, Death, Ysabell, the Librarian and Cohen the Barbarian and the what is best in life scene, lifted from the Schwarzenegger film was hilarious. There’s also druids and gnomes and if Nac Mac Feegles are just one kind of gnome, then a mention in the second book would make them some of the earliest Discworld characters.

An examination of the character of TwoFlower is also intriguing in that Pratchett uses him as a tourist to introduce us to the Discworld while also providing satire of wealth as voyeurism.

Rincewind as a survivor also made me consider another connection with Piers Anthony’s Xanth as Bink from that series is a similar character.

I’m rereading all of these, too much fun.