Mort
Widely cited as the point Discworld became Discworld — the first book carried by character and theme rather than parody — and the foundation of the Death sequence, the series' most beloved strand.
Book Entry · Fantasy
The Colour of Magic
by Terry Pratchett · 1983 · Discworld, book 1
What is The Colour of Magic about?
Twoflower, the Discworld's first tourist — four-eyed, relentlessly optimistic, owner of sapient pearwood Luggage that follows him on hundreds of little legs and eats people who threaten it — arrives in Ankh-Morpork with a camera and inconvenient quantities of gold, and is assigned for safekeeping to Rincewind: failed wizard, accomplished coward, fluent in scream. Their flight across the Disc parodies Leiber, McCaffrey and the entire fantasy shelf, ends on a literal cliffhanger over the Rim, and introduces a flat world on four elephants on the turtle Great A'Tuin, sex unknown. The satire is still warming up; the furniture is already immortal.
Why it matters
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.
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)
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