In a quest to escape the reality of 2020 and recapture my youth, I’ve set myself the goal of reading all 41 Discworld novels in one year. Join me on this voyage of discovery which definitely isn’t a complete waste of time.

Art by Paul Kidby

Well, 2019 was a tough year. Aside from the endless politics, which because of my job and the desire to remain housed, I had to try and keep up with I had several personal difficulties; Money, work and a rapid succession of tragedies convincing me my life was design by some utter bastard, that sort of thing.

Come the winter months, turning 31 and realising I’m more out of shape that I imagined I would be that this point I turned to the teenage refuge of fantasy. Fondly remember the hours spent playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and watching Lord of The Rings. Digging around my shelves for that kick of nostalgia, I came across of Terry Pratchett’s Reaper Man. I had read that, and a few other Discworld books as a spotty teenage oik and decide I should delve back in.

I remembered thinking myself of a Pratchett fan, having only read a few of the Rincewind and Death books out of sequence but put away earnest enjoyment for artificial cynism when an older boy mocked Pratchett for not be cool. Which is an immensely stupid thing for me to have done.

I felt I owed it to my teenage self to go back and stake my claim on the series in a bolder way than I was capable of as a teenager. On top of which I could challenge myself to some literary achievement. I resolved to read all of the Discworld novels in one year and document if they could save me from the dread of the regular world or merely point out the problems with it sardonically. The good money was on the latter.

Forty-one novels isn’t a lot to read in a year if they’re the only things you read, but my job requires me to read and write a lot. It’s 41 novels, in addition to having a life and having some semblance of a career. I guess that’s why it’s a challenge. People who could just do this for fun quite have too much time and money and not enough sense, though I’m not sure what that means for me. Without further adieu, book one.

THE COLOUR OF MAGIC

Mild spoilers…

Art by Josh Kirby

I’m wasn’t quite what I expected.

I hadn’t read The Colour Of Magic previously so to summarised very quickly, Rincewind, an inept and cowardly wizard, is hired by Twoflower, a naive but wealthy tourist (the first tourist on the disc no less), to show him around the city of Ahnk Morpork. Things get out on hand and it becomes a romp across the various locations of this disk.

Being familiar with a few of the working parts of the book from my brief explorations as a teen, the whole book felt kind of disjointed. It’s almost like Pratchett didn’t have an overriding story arc or theme he wanted to achieve. I’ll look into that when I get a chance.

It also repeats itself a few times. Not just in telling you about the world and magic of the disc but in similes. Twice barbarian warriors ( Bravd the Hublander and Hrun ) are described as moving so quickly their movements “appeared to travel between two points in space without at any time occupying the intervening air.”

As I was going along with Twoflower and Rincewind on this tour of the disc I started to worry that I had made a huge mistake. True I was mildly enjoying myself, it’s relatively easy reading with good gags, but the first book feels a bit like an extended wiki-entry for Discworld with a few anecdotes thrown in. Or maybe, since my teen years, I’d become more like Rincewind — more cynical, critical, downtrodden and less likely to throw myself into an adventure. Why the hell did I agree to do this?

I wanted to avoid reading up on the history of the writing of the Discworld series. The fact it’s the first in the series probably goes some way to explaining where it struggles. For now, I wanted to keep my mind clear of outside meta-criticism. I already had enough of my own to contend with. Maybe I’d just randomly selected better entries in the series during my youth. Maybe it the haze of nostalgia.

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One thing that did stick in my mind was the line “the gods had a habit of going round to atheists’ houses and smashing their windows.” Again it’s repeated for some unknown reason but it rang a bell in my head, or maybe smashed a window.

As an insufferable atheist teen, I would have hated that line. No, I was far too smart to even humour the potency or impact of gods, unreal or otherwise on everyday life.

But, as I’ve got older and more cynical, I’ve at least come to know what I don’t know. Know what I mean? That doesn’t mean I believe in a god or gods now — I pretty certain we just become fertiliser when we die — only that the way we interact with fiction isn’t as easy to limit or define. After all, it was fantasy and some fictitious self-history I am retreating into to avoid or subdue the grinding of the real world.

The Colour of Magic is not a complete story. It ends with a cliff-hanger. Rincewind dangles from the disc, uncertain what will happen next. Which, to be fair, so was I. My first foray back to the Disc hadn’t been exactly what I was looking for but I didn’t feel like I was done either. I could only hope that taking the plunge and landing in The Light Fantastic would be a good choice, that I could turn off or at least tune down the criticism I’ve fed on and regurgitated over the years.

Spoilers, I’d already bought the sequel, so read the opening chapter and it’s immediately better. That means I can, nay must, continue and don’t have to stop being overly critical. I win without any personal change. Ah-hah!

More next week.