The Colour of Magic: Part One, "The Colour of Magic"

[Lulu]

Spoilers for the first half here! Any spoilers for later books/characters, please put in spoiler tags.

What are you impressions of the first part of the book? What do you like/not like? If this is a reread, have you picked up on anything you didn't the first time around?

This reddit thread for this can be found here.

[Sam]

ok, I only read the prologue yesterday. My favourite description is of the Great A'Tuin's eyes as being "crusted with rheum and stardust".

I just love the combination of something old and icky and something perceived as glamorous and pretty.

I also like the almost tangential nature of his descriptions, it's less like literature where things are described in a fashion that half the readership may have to look up in a dictionary, and more like a conversation with a friend who can explain things clearly, cleverly and with humour.

[Lulu]

This took a surprisingly short time to get through! Very funny so far. I like a lot of the tongue-in-cheek stuff ("in-sewer-ants", "echo-gnomics" in particular). While I knew the world was on a turtle's back (thanks to the boardgame Ankh-Morpork), I didn't realise it had such a sophisticated physics.

Twoflower is adorable in his eagerness to see round the city. I'm excited to stay with him for the story. I'd heard of Rincewind before (he's more famous than he thinks!), and he lived up to reputation, I think.

I would definitely agree with you Sam, you description of his writing style seems spot on.

I have been finding his jumping around a little jarring. However, that's because my Kindle version doesn't have page breaks, so I don't realise the next paragraph is set in a different space/time until I start reading it. Very difficult for my head to get around.

[Brett]

Lulu wrote: "I have been finding his jumping around a little jarring. However, that's because my Kindle version doesn't have page breaks, so I don't realise the next paragraph is set in a different space/time until I start reading it. Very difficult for my head to get around. "

I had much the same issue on my Kindle, it does get a little better as the book progresses. That or maybe I'm just getting used to it.

[Joshua]

re: formatting - same problems on the (original) nook. One of the most annoying things is that the footnotes aren't easily accessible on the device.

Actually, I have an issue with my digital copy of Equal Rites, where a character writes a letter, but instead of advancing to the next page, the book skips ahead an entire section, and I didn't know until it was too late. So I read the middle of that book after the end.

As I read through TCoM again I'm finding it much easier to follow the jumps because I'm familiar with the story. The second read is much more enjoyable for me, and I'm finding I'm getting more personality from the writing than I did initially.

[Lulu]

Luckily, Kindle doesn't have too many issues with the footnotes, with a quick easy link to them and back.

Glad to see we're all getting used to it. I have read some ebooks that are so badly formatted that they completely took away from the book.

[Gemma]

Im finding the jumps a struggle with an actual book! Definitely getting better the more i read and get used to the style though.

[Sean]

The biggest problem with the book is the framing devices. I didn't mind the God's poker game, but the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" tribute actually confused me. It seemed like they were main characters, but they weren't once Rincewind and Twoflower showed up.

[Christina]

Lulu wrote: "This took a surprisingly short time to get through! Very funny so far. I like a lot of the tongue-in-cheek stuff ("in-sewer-ants", "echo-gnomics" in particular). While I knew the world was on a tur..."

I read this book on my Kindle and had the same problem with the page breaks, too. I would be reading and then get very confused, thinking I skipped over something. But it was pretty easy to get used to it.

I thought it might take me some time to get into this story, but I found it pretty easy to get sucked into this book. I LOVE the humor in this book. I'm so looking forward to reading this entire series!

[Christina]

Sean wrote: "The biggest problem with the book is the framing devices. I didn't mind the God's poker game, but the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" tribute actually confused me. It seemed like they were main charac..."

I agree that the framing devices were a big difficult getting used to. This happens quite a bit later in the book, too, where characters are introduced but then are never mentioned again. I'm wondering if these characters will make appearances in later books.