Bobby reads Discworld: The Light Fantastic

As I said in my thoughts on The Color of Magic, I’d been told many times that the Discworld series started out rough as Pratchett found his voice over the course of the first few books. Going into the second book, which is a direct continuation of the first, I was braced for more of the same: an enjoyable but very uneven genre parody starring Rincewind the funny wizard and Twoflower the fantasy tourist. An amusing but unambitious bit of pulp fantasy writing, with lots of fun moments that don’t quite come together to form a cohesive whole.

So I was very surprised to find that, while we still haven’t quite reached the proper Discworld style I’ve heard so much about, The Light Fantastic was a huge improvement over its predecessor, and a book I had a great time reading.

The Light Fantastic is essentially The Color of Magic: Part Two, picking up exactly where the first book left off. Rincewind and Twoflower had fallen off the edge of the world, their fates uncertain. This book begins with reality itself literally being rewritten to place our heroes back on the disc, safe and sound.

There’s a reason for this: as established in the first book, Rincewind’s head contains the eighth and final spell from a legendary tome known as the Octavo, which is said to have existed since the dawn of the universe. The Octavo had been kept in the wizarding university Rincewind previously attended, you see, and he once read it on a dare, at which point the eighth spell decided to quite literally live in his head rent free.

Spells in the Discworld universe are sort of alive and have their own free will, and this one has been both a blessing and a curse for Rincewind. On the one hand, the Spell has been secretly manipulating reality to keep him alive all this time, giving an in-universe explanation for how the shittiest wizard ever has managed to get out of so many near death experiences. On the other hand, this one huge spell has left no room in his brain for any others. He’s tried for years to memorize other, more useful spells, but these lesser spells are “too scared” to stay in the same mind as one from the Octavo. While a little of this was established in the first book, it didn’t really go anywhere, so it’s nice to see it expanded upon here (and to learn what the Spell actually does in the thrilling climax).

The Spell is at the center of something The Light Fantastic has over its predecessor: a plot! Whereas The Color of Magic felt like four short stories stapled together and called a novel, book two has an honest to goodness narrative. The world turtle that carries the Discworld is headed towards an ominous red star, and the wizarding community believes that reading all eight of the Octavo’s spells is the key to their salvation. The fact that one of the spells has lodged itself in Rincewind’s brain is the central source of conflict that ties the events of the book together into a cohesive package

As part of this newfound main plot, book two also features a central antagonist in the form of a rival wizard named Trymon (played by Tim Curry in the TV adaptation). Trymon is a cold, calculating wizard who values organization over the chaos of traditional magic, and who wants to use any means necessary to put himself in a position of power in the wizard community. The book regularly checks in on him and the other wizards back in Ankh-Morpork as Rincewind is off having more misadventures with Twoflower, and he also sends multiple groups of mercenaries out to retrieve Rincewind. While book two still features a lot of standalone setpiece moments along the way, having this threat looming in the background from page one gives everything a sense of urgency and importance that was sorely lacking the first time around.

The biggest and most consistent change, however, is the prose. I don’t know what happened in the three years between the first two books, but Pratchett’s writing has gotten so much snappier and funnier. While I almost dozed off a few times reading The Color of Magic in spite of its fun ideas, it feels like nearly every paragraph of the second book has at least one fantastic line, and the dialogue is a treat.

"Well, you see, the point is that we've always believed stars to be pretty much the same as our sun—"

"You mean balls of fire about a mile across?"

"Yes. But this new one is, well—big."

"Bigger than the sun?" said Trymon. He'd always considered a mile-wide ball of fire quite impressive, although he disapproved of stars on principle. They made the sky look untidy.

"A lot bigger," said the astrologer slowly.

"Bigger than Great A'Tuin's head, perhaps?"

The astrologer looked wretched.

"Bigger than the Great A'Tuin and the Disc together," he said. "We've checked," he added hurriedly, "and we're quite sure."

"That is big," agreed Trymon. "The word 'huge' comes to mind."

"Massive," agreed the astrologer hurriedly.

"Hmm."

Perhaps the best example of this newfound creative confidence is a new main character introduced partway through the book. The Color of Magic featured Hrun, a buff and not extremely bright hero who was quite blatantly modeled after Conan the Barbarian. He was present for about half the story, existed to poke a bit of fun at the archetype, and then got unceremoniously dropped from the story before its final act. This time around, he’s been replaced by a character named Cohen the Barbarian. The name’s a dead giveaway, but yes, this guy’s still a Conan parody. However, instead of just being a straight expy of Conan to poke fun at, Cohen is something more interesting: he’s a version of that archetype who never stopped adventuring, even past his prime, and is now still fighting evil at the ripe old age of 87.

Cohen is a lot of fun to read and a much more well-rounded character than Hrun ever was, and it’s not surprising for me to learn that he kept popping up in future books. Of course, for as much as I liked reading about him, Cohen also comes with some baggage that proves I’m still not quite out of the weeds. While Pratchett was definitely starting to move towards more empathetic writing, the Discworld universe is still a pretty cynical place in many respects, and the characters often exist more to be the subjects of mockery.

Cohen caught me off guard when he suddenly announced to Rincewind that he had plans to marry Bethan, the fourth member of this makeshift adventuring party, who’s introduced as a sacrificial maiden who the protagonists rescue against her will. (She briefly complains about how a life spent among druids has now been flushed down the drain if they aren’t going to sacrifice her after all, and how she could’ve spent all those years doing anything else.) The problem here is that Cohen is 87, and Bethan is 17.

Rincewind does immediately point out that this is extremely weird, of course, and the wiki tells me that the two apparently got divorced off-screen shortly after the events of this book. I know it’s not Pratchett advocating for 70-year age gaps or anything. It’s supposed to be absurd. It’s poking fun at how this Conan-style hero is still only interested in young maidens even in his 80s. And Pratchett thankfully steered clear of the Master Roshi style “pervy old man” trope, instead focusing on how Cohen likes that Bethan knows how to straighten his aging spine and things like that. But still. Before this, a heartwarming little moment where Cohen realized that Twoflower still saw him as this awesome, legendary hero had me thinking that the tone of the series was shifting more rapidly than I expected. But I guess we’re not there yet.

Similarly, a bit about how Rincewind and most other wizards had a misogynistic bias against the types of magic women tended to perform and didn’t allow them to study as wizards made me think a little less of him. Again, while the characters are growing, there are still more instances where we’re supposed to laugh at the characters instead of with them. In many respects, they kind of intentionally suck as people.

To put it in terms of modern sitcoms: tonally, we’re not at something like The Good Place yet. It’s closer to Always Sunny with wizards. But for now, that’s not such a bad thing for it to be.

Some stumbling blocks aside, I found The Light Fantastic to be an extremely enjoyable read, and a clear improvement over its predecessor. While first book was a series of random events that just sort of stopped at an arbitrary point, this one offered a complete adventure that allowed the characters to grow a bit and left me satisfied. I’d list more funny moments that gave me a chuckle, but there are too many to list and this post is already long enough

I was also very intrigued to see Pratchett lay the groundwork for the next two books. As mentioned, the gender divide between witches and wizards was briefly established, and will be explored more in the next book, Equal Rites. (We also met a male relative of Granny Weatherwax at Unseen University, although poor Galder is quickly killed by the Luggage.) And Death has already moved past his shtick of trying to take Rincewind’s life. In a scene at his home, we got a tease of his personal life, and the fact that he has an adopted human daughter was revealed. Big things are on the horizon in this series, and after how good this second book was, I’m now even more pumped to get to these new stories