The Colour of Magic

Setting

The story takes place on the Discworld, a planet-sized flat disc carried through space on the backs of four huge elephants - Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen - who themselves stand on the shell of Great A'Tuin, a gigantic sea turtle. The surface of the disc contains oceans and continents, and with them, civilizations, cities, forests and mountains.

Synopsis

The story begins in Ankh-Morpork, the biggest city on the Discworld. The main character is an incompetent and cynical wizard named Rincewind, who is hired as a guide to the rich but naive Twoflower, an insurance clerk from the Agatean Empire who has come to visit Ankh-Morpork. Initially attempting to flee with his advance payment, Rincewind is captured by the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, who forces him to protect Twoflower, lest the tourist's death provoke the Agatean Emperor into invading Ankh-Morpork. After Twoflower is kidnapped by a gang of thieves and taken to the Broken Drum Pub, Rincewind stages a rescue alongside the Luggage, an indestructible, enchanted and sentient chest belonging to Twoflower. Before this, Twoflower convinces the Drum's barman to take out a fire insurance policy; the barman subsequently attempts to burn down the Drum in order to claim the money, but ends up causing a fire that destroys the whole of Ankh-Morpork. Rincewind and Twoflower escape in the chaos.

Rincewind and Twoflower travel towards the city of Quirm, unaware that their adventures on this journey are actually the subject of a boardgame played by the Gods of the Discworld. The pair are separated when they are attacked by a mountain troll summoned by Offler the Crocodile God. The ignorant Twoflower ends up being led to the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth, a being said to be the opposite of both good and evil, while Rincewind ends up imprisoned in a dryad-inhabited tree in the woods, where he watches the events in Bel Shamharoth's temple through a magical portal. The pair are reunited when Rincewind escapes into the temple through the portal, and they encounter Hrun the Barbarian, a parody of heroes in the Swords and Sorcery genre. The trio are attacked and nearly killed by Bel-Shamharoth, but escape when Rincewind accidentally blinds the creature with Twoflower's magical picture box. Hrun agrees to travel with and protect Twoflower and Rincewind in exchange for heroic pictures of him from the picture box.

The trio visit the Wyrmberg, an upside-down mountain which is home to dragon-riders who summon their dragons by imagining them, and are separated when the riders attack them. Rincewind escapes capture but is forced by Kring, Hrun's sentient magical sword, to attempt to rescue his friends. Twoflower is imprisoned within the Wyrmburg, and because of his fascination with dragons, is able to summon one greater than those of the Wyrmberg riders, who he names Ninereeds, allowing him to escape captivity and save Rincewind from being killed in a duel with one of the three heirs of the Wyrmburg. Hrun meanwhile is enlisted by Liessa, another of the heirs, to defeat the other two heirs in mortal combat so that he may rule the Wyrmberg alongside her, with Liessa intending to use him as a puppet ruler. Despite refusing to ride a dragon, Hrun defeats both the brothers and has them banished from the Wyrmburg. Unaware of these events, Twoflower, Rincewind and Ninereeds snatch Hrun, but as they attempt to escape into the skies, Twoflower passes out from the lack of oxygen, causing Ninereeds to disappear. Hrun is saved by Liessa, but Rincewind and Twoflower find themselves falling to their deaths. In desperation, Rincewind manages to use the Wyrmberg's power to temporarily summon a passenger jet from the real world, before he and Twoflower fall into the ocean.

The two of them are taken to the edge of the Discworld by the ocean currents and nearly carried over, but they are caught by the Circumfence, a huge net built by the nation of Krull to catch sea life and flotsam washed in from the rest of the Discworld. They are rescued by Tethis the sea troll, a being composed of water who had fallen off the edge of his own world and onto the Discworld, where he was subsequently enslaved by the Krullians. Rincewind and Twoflower are then taken by the Krullians to their capital, where they learn that the Krullians intend to discover the sex of Great A'Tuin by launching a space capsule over the edge of the Disc, and plan to sacrifice Rincewind and Twoflower to get the god Fate to smile on the voyage, Fate insisting on their sacrifice after they caused him to lose the earlier game. Rincewind and Twoflower attempt to escape, but end up stealing the capsule, which is launched with Twoflower inside, the tourist wishing to see the other worlds of the universe. Rincewind is unable to get into the capsule in time, and falls off the Disc alongside it, the Luggage following them soon after.

The story segues immediately into the beginning of The Light Fantastic; the two books can therefore be seen as one two-volume novel.

Structure

The Colour of Magic is one of the few of the forty Discworld novels to be divided into sections or chapters, some others being Pyramids, Going Postal, Making Money, and some of the books for younger readers, specifically The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents and the five Tiffany Aching books, The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight and The Shepherd's Crown.

The sections are:

The four main parts are lengthy, and have been likened to short stories or novellas rather than chapters.

In the section "The Colour of Magic", the characters Bravd and The Weasel relate to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser from Fritz Leiber's Sword series. "The Sending of Eight" has Lovecraftian references, and "The Lure of the Wyrm" parodies Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight.

Graphic novel

A graphic novel, illustrated by Steven Ross and adapted by Scott Rockwell, was first published as a four-part comic in 1991 by the Innovative Corporation, of Wheeling, WV and then published as a single volume by Corgi on November 12, 1992. Part 1 was originally announced for publication by Innovative on 10 December 1990, but it was delayed as Terry Pratchett had not been shown the artwork for approval as contractually required and disliked it, so the first issue had to be redrawn.

The graphic novel is split up into several chapters like the book, and is faithful to the source material in that it is built up like classic barbarian stories (in this case comics à la Red Sonja). Crucial differences between the book and comic include the cutting-out of some of the adventures in Ankh-Morpork and Krull, along with combining the characters of Galder Weatherwax and Ymper Trymon. Also, in the book, the female Dragonriders are described as being topless, as barbarian women in fiction tend to be. However, in the graphic novel the women wear chain-mail chestpieces as well as the clothing described in the book. It has been published in hardcover, along with the graphic novel of The Light Fantastic, as The Discworld Graphic Novels (ISBN 9780061685965).

TV adaptation

The Mob Film Company and Sky One have produced a two-part adaptation, combining both The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, directed by Vadim Jean and broadcast over Easter of 2008. David Jason starred in the role of Rincewind. Sean Astin, best known for his role as Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings film series, took the role of Twoflower. Christopher Lee took over the role of Death from Ian Richardson (a role Lee previously portrayed in the animated series Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters).

Computer game

The plot was adapted for a text adventure computer game in 1986, by Delta 4 and released by Piranha, a Macmillan subsidiary, in Amstrad/CDC, Commodore and Spectrum formats.