The Colour of Magic
The launch of the bestselling and best-loved comic fantasy series ever written — rougher than what followed, and historically indispensable: every Discworld reread starts somewhere, and the Luggage debuts here.
Book Entry · Fantasy
What is Night Watch about?
Chasing the murderer Carcer across the University rooftops in a magical storm, Commander Sam Vimes is thrown thirty years back — to the Ankh-Morpork of his own brutal youth, days before the Glorious Revolution of Treacle Mine Road, with the mentor who shaped him dead on arrival and the vacancy now his to fill. Teaching his own younger self to be a copper, policing a city sliding toward the barricades, knowing how few of the men beside him survive the lilac-scented morning: Pratchett plays it almost entirely straight, and the result is the series' masterpiece — Les Misérables with better policing theory and one perfect hard-boiled egg.
Why it matters
Generally acclaimed the finest Discworld novel and one of the great fantasy novels of its decade in any register: the annual 'wearing the lilac' tributes among readers each 25th of May are their own evidence.
Where does it sit in the series?
Forty-one novels on a flat world carried by four elephants on a giant turtle: Pratchett's comic mirror in which wizards, witches, coppers and DEATH reflect everything that matters about the round one.
In the Guide from Discworld:
- The Colour of Magic (1983)
- Mort (1987)
- Small Gods (1992)
- Night Watch (2002)
Read next
Behold the Man
Nebula winner and the New Wave's most notorious provocation: time-travel paradox as theology, handled with a seriousness that outlasted the scandal.
The Big Time
Hugo winner (1958).