Colour Of Magic By Terry Pratchett example essay topic

"In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part... See... Great A'Tuin the Turtles comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters. Through sea-sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and asteroid dust, He stares fixedly at the Destination". The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett, which is a fantasy book, is the first novel in his phenomenally successful Discworld Series.

This series is made up of 27 books based on a world supported on the back of a giant turtle. The Colour of Magic is made up of four small novels, which is mainly about the magical aspects of this world, with the different types of magic known to Rincewind the (failed) Wizard and Twoflower, the universe's first tourist. Terry Pratchett is known for his fantasy novels, some of them being truckers, diggers and wings from the Bromeliad series. He is one of those authors who have managed to create a whole world, with its own history, heroes and language, very similar, in these aspects, to Tolkein's books. The Colour of Magic is another one of these creations. As mentioned before, the Colour of Magic is set on the back of a giant turtle called Great A'Tuin.

From the beginning, the author shows a wide range of ideas that relates to the real world, one example being "that A'Tuin crawls from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating... This is known as the Big Bang Hypothesis". The first book of the Colour of Magic, also called the Colour of Magic, starts off in one of the most infamous cities on the Discworld, Ankh-Morpork. This book is more like an extended introduction to the Discworld. Here is when Rincewind meets Twoflower on his journey to learn about life in Ankh-Morpork. The story continues where Twoflower introduces the concept off inn-sewer-ants (insurance) and in turn, burns down the city.

The second book continues where Twoflower and Rincewind continue to explore the continent the city used to lye on. In the third book, they come across a place that is ruled by a ghost and where dragons only exist if you believe in them. The fourth and final book sees our two so-called heroes at the edge of the world where they have to run away before they are sacrificed by Fate. Here, you can see the extent of Terry Pratchett's imagination. He has managed to combine the action and fantasy of this story to produce subtle humour: "In a city where public executions, duels, magical feuds and strange events regularly punctuated the daily rounds, the inhabitants had brought the profession of interested bystanders to a peak of perfection. They were, to a man, highly skilled gawp ers".

This shows how Terry Pratchett manages to turn something that was normal into witty humour. In this story, there are essentially 2 main characters. One of the main characters is Rincewind, a failed wizard from the University of Unseen who accidentally learned one of the eight most powerful spells known. The author describes him as having two different sides. One is an incompetent ignoramus to the eyes of the people of Ankh-Morpork.

The other is a mentor to Twoflower. He is showed as an 'all-knowing' person compared to Twoflower, as it is frequently shown Rincewind demonstrating a display of his knowledge. Rincewind is actually a combination of both of the above. Even though he has said to be a failed wizard, throughout the novel, he demonstrates knowledge which seemed to be unknown to the regular man.

One example is where Rincewind explains something that seems to be very complicated: "The disc [flying machine] would " ve been created by Fresnel's Wonderful Concentrator. This calls for many rare and unstable ingredients, such as demon's breath and so forth and takes the best of eight fourth-grade wizards a week to envision". But he also demonstrates 'stupidness' with things that seem to be known to the regular man: " 'You know', said Rincewind, 'I never knew there were he-dryads'... Druellae snorted, 'Stupid! Where do you think acorns come from?' " The author uses a style of language when writing a conversation with Rincewind.

The author often uses abrupt language in a commanding tone: " 'I WAS SURPRISED THAT YOU JOSTLED ME, FOR I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEE THIS VERY NIGHT. ' [said Death] 'Oh no, not - [said Rincewind]... 'YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME, THE WHOLE SYSTEM'S GOT SCREWED UP AGAIN... LOOK, THERE'S NO CHANCE OF ME -?' 'No!' 'SOD YOU, THEN!' " The above was another example of the author's way of creating humour. It also shows how he writes when Rincewind is in a conversation with another person when he is the lesser of the two. This concept is reversed when he is not the lesser of the two. One of the other main characters is Twoflower, a four-eyed tourist from the counter-continent who walks round with a piece of luggage on its own feet.

The author often describes him as a na " ive and laid back person: " 'Don't you understand, we " re going over the edge!' 'Can't we do anything?' 'No!' 'Then I can't see the sense of panicking,' said Twoflower calmly". The author manages to create this laid back feel by the language he uses - it is phrased in a way that asks the complexity of things. In this story, there is not a unique style the author uses to describe each of the characters, but there is one common style he uses. The author displays the characters thoughts and moods by the actions and this is common feature throughout. This book has many good things, but there are also bad things as well. One may say that a good book is where there is a balance between dialogue and description.

The colour of Magic does not have a proper balance of this, but instead has the extreme of one and none of the other. One example where speech dominates the passage is straight after one of the most exciting events in the book happened where the author could " ve spent time describing the aftermath. In this passage, almost every line is mainly speech with the rest of it using words like 'said'. This often makes the book very tedious and often repetitive as some of the background jokes in the speech are repeated many times. One example where the passage is dominated by description is just after another major event.

This is another passage where it could " ve been made better - this time by having less detail. In the whole passage, there was only one word of speech (the passage was one and a half pages long) and the detail was often very exhaustive. One example is where the author described a beetle that was on a person's leg. This had no significance or added no effects to the passage and seemed to be there to just fill up space.

Without including the trivial details, the author manages to create an effective atmosphere. He not only describes the sights, but also the smells and sounds. He also uses well-chosen words to amplify the effect. One example of this: "He was swinging a short sword back and forth idly, and stared out across the tree-tops with the air of one carrying out a tedious and unglamorous assignment". As mentioned before, most of the passages are either laden with description or speech. The point where this does not happen is during action when there is a balance.

During this, there is a pattern where there is some speech, followed by around twice as much description and then speech again. This pattern is not very noticeable and you often find this in other books as well. The author still manages to incorporate subtle humour with the action making it somewhat of an enjoyment to read. This does not get old as there is actually not much action which is one of the elements of this book that makes it quite boring. Overall, I believe that this may have been an effective book, but in the end wasn't very good. At the end of every event, everything was 'wrapped up', giving no reason for an urge to read on unlike books like Harry Potter where it is hard to put down the book as there is always some type of cliff-hanger.

As a result, the witty humour was unable to compensate it and so makes the book very boring, except at some odd places. Overall, I would give it a score of 6/10 and would only recommend this book for fans of Terry Pratchett.