The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 21 March 2024
by Terry Pratchett
(The first novel of Discworld, as the subtitle should say.) There is no doubt that most genre fiction sets itself up well as parody. So, here's a bit of fantasy fiction done in a style not dissimilar to Douglas Adams's satire of science fiction in his Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Not as uproariously funny (and teenage-quotable) as Adams, Terry Pratchett has, nevertheless, a sly comic sense that permeates this surreal journey upon a surreal flat disc of a world (watch out for the Flat Earthers taking this as scientific evidence). We fall right onto the Disc, and into the story as a great city near the "hub" burns and collapses. We meet characters by the roadside, and are soon back a few days with the incomplete wizard Rincewind, and just as a man comes ashore in this gritty commercial city, a novelty in this world, Twoflowers, an actual tourist from another continent. He is as naive as any stranger in a strange land, and free with his money, being clueless of exchange rates, and an easy target for schemers and theives. But, perhaps he is more savvy than all that. He is , after all, accompanied by a piece of sentient luggage that is also something of a bodyguard.
It is hard to describe the story from here at least partly because it is so disjointed in narrative path, time and place, and even exchanges universes from time to time. Our heroes are at the mercy of a landscape full of magic pitfalls and a dice playing coterie of bored gods. Like most of us, after all. There is not so much of a plot as there is a fast-paced series of comic scenes taken as it were from the playbook of fantasy fiction. The physics, of course, don't make any sense. There isn't a ton of logic within the Discworld. And yet there is charm, humor and a very colorful depiction of its world and the giant turtle that is burdened with it. Its tropes of fantasy are very familiar and a touch repetitive, but it races towards its end, and before the reader is fully aware, he or she is drawn into having to read the second volume in this 41-volume series. As the series evolves, it is said, Pratchett's own talent and critique sharpen to the point at which he became something of an icon in his field.