The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett
by
Stuart Holland
A great red star is going to destroy the Discworld, and Rincewind doesn’t even know he needs to save it.
The thing that continues to stand out most about Discworld is Pratchett’s knack for evocative, surprising, and immediately understandable prose. The in-universe laws against metaphor which turn into a running joke. The trolls that are made of rocks and become rocks after they think too much about whether they’re rocks or not (or some meditative approximation of that). He catches you off guard over and over with the way he chooses to construct a sentence, but you’re never left bamboozled for longer than a few words unintentionally.
Given that there are so many Discworld books, and it’s my understanding that this second one is the last we see of Rincewind for a while, this does feel like a great cosmic introduction. I remain enamored with the Luggage, which retains its supernatural powers in this book but also gains a bit of character. It’s not unlike a kind of loyal puppy. Though one with considerably more foresight. Its elaborate routine to frighten Twoflower’s captors over the course of a chapter was particularly delightful.
Overall I enjoyed this book quite a lot, but I still feel, as expected, that this is really just the series getting started. It’s Pratchett finding the world and the voice that people really love in the later parts.
