Fantasy

Review: The Light Fantastic

Jay
Cover of the book, featuring a wizard and another man riding a wooden trunk with legs through the sky over trolls below.

Title: The Light Fantastic

Series: Discworld #2

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Falling, death, foreign presences in your mind, body horror, adult/minor relationship, violence

Spoiler Warning: This book is second in a series, and even though the Discworld books are mostly independent, this review may contain minor spoilers of The Colour of Magic.

Back Cover:

In this sequel to the much-acclaimed The Colour of Magic, Rincewind, Twoflower and the many-legged luggage return to the Discworld with the help of the Octavo and overcome the attempts by the wizards of the Unseen University to capture them, and then save the Discworld from an invasion from the Dungeon Dimensions.

Review:

This picks up exactly where The Colour of Magic left off and continues the story, which is the most continuity I’ve found in the Discworld series so far. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, since this book does nicely wrap up all the plot threads started in the previous one, but it does mean that the things I didn’t like as much about book one were continued here.

Starting with Twoflower. At least the story acknowledges how obnoxious he is, making him a sort of commentary on tourists in general, but he was just as obnoxious. It also was very heavy on what I’ve termed Introduction to Discworld content – the kind of stuff like how the great turtle that the Discworld is on works, and how the day/night cycle works on a flat world, and a brief sampling of a lot of different places and aspects of Disc life.

There was more plot-related stuff here, too, with the spell in Rincewind’s head having a reason for being there and the whole fact that the Disc might be about to come to an end if Rincewind can’t fix it. Even though it really was a continuation of book one, the plot finally kicked into gear and it felt like more of a story and less of an Introduction to Discworld with characters doing things. Rincewind himself even got a bit of a character arc, which was nice to see.

The Light Fantastic is very much a world-focused book. And despite how difficult I find it to enjoy a book whose characters are hard to connect to and that lacks a plot I can really sink my teeth into, I did enjoy this book. Rincewind and Twoflower go all over the place, and despite mostly-flat characters and an overall lackluster plot, it’s hard to hate a book with this many cool settings and fantasy creatures to encounter. Plus this book is where the hilarious one-liners and amusing metaphors start to show up, and I adore Sir Terry’s sense of humor. This definitely isn’t my favorite Discworld book, but it’s still perfectly readable and often entertaining.

The Discworld series:

  1. The Colour of Magic
  2. The Light Fantastic
  3. Equal Rites
  4. Mort
  5. Sourcery
  6. Wyrd Sisters
  7. Pyramids
  8. Guards! Guards!
  9. Eric
  10. Moving Pictures
  11. Reaper Man
  12. Witches Abroad
  13. Small Gods
  14. Lords and Ladies
  15. Men at Arms
  16. Soul Music
  17. Interesting Times
  18. Maskerade
  19. Feet of Clay
  20. Hogfather
  21. Jingo
  22. The Last Continent
  23. Carpe Jugulum
  24. The Fifth Elephant
  25. The Truth
  26. Thief of Time
  27. The Last Hero
  28. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
  29. Night Watch
  30. The Wee Free Men
  31. Monstrous Regiment
  32. A Hat Full of Sky
  33. Going Postal
  34. Thud!
  35. Wintersmith
  36. Making Money
  37. Unseen Academicals
  38. I Shall Wear Midnight
  39. Snuff
  40. Raising Steam
  41. The Shepherd’s Crown