I guess this would, or should be 'The Colour of Magic', but us Americans are stingy with our "U's".  I thank you all here at BookLikes for getting me back to where I wanted to read this.

No review from me on this book.  I imagine anything that could be said about this book has been said many times and many languages, so I leave us with 2 quotes that I loved.

Magic never dies. It merely fades away.

Then there's my favorite quote of the whole book.

“You’ll fight us both together?” said Liartes, a tall, wiry man with long black hair.

“Yah.”

“That’s pretty uneven odds, isn’t it?”

“Yah. I outnumber you one to two.”

 

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

Discworld book 1

I tried. I really did. But this book was not for me. It dragged. It had a lot of people and things happening and I felt like I needed to read a prequel book in order to understand everything that was going on. Maybe I just didn't get the funny parts of the book. I just felt lost through most of this. This is my second time attempting to read this book too and I don't think I will go back for a third time.

This book follows a wizard named Rincewind who guides Discworld's first tourist, Twoflower, around Anhk-Morpork then throughout the western lands and the great Circle Sea all the while being followed by Twoflower's luggage.

The writing was fine, I just thought the flow was a bit lopsided. 

Here are some key points to remember when choosing color contact lenses:

• Light filtering lenses:

• Color-changing lenses:

• Subtle color contact lenses:

• Party color contact lenses:

Thomas Fawkes is turning to stone, and the only cure to the Stone Plague is to join his father’s plot to assassinate the king of England.

Silent wars leave the most carnage. The wars that are never declared, but are carried out in dark alleys with masks and hidden knives. Wars where color power alters the natural rhythm of 17th century London. And when the king calls for peace, no one listens until he finally calls for death.

But what if death finds him first?

Keepers think the Igniters caused the plague. Igniters think the Keepers did. But all Thomas knows is that the Stone Plague infecting his eye is spreading. And if he doesn’t do something soon, he’ll be a lifeless statue. So when his Keeper father, Guy Fawkes, invites him to join the Gunpowder Plot—claiming it will put an end to the plague—Thomas is in.

The plan: use 36 barrels of gunpowder to blow up the Igniter King.

The problem: Doing so will destroy the family of the girl Thomas loves. But backing out of the plot will send his father and the other plotters to the gallows. To save one, Thomas will lose the other.

No matter Thomas’s choice, one thing is clear: once the decision is made and the color masks have been put on, there’s no turning back.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried to get into this one and struggled for literally months to finish it, but I give up. This book doesn't hold my attention at all.

What intrigued me to pick it up forces me to put it down. Tying the Guy Fawkes legend into an urban fantasy Victorian/Gregorian English setting is an appealing idea, but the lack of urgency in the story, the endless inner monologues and piecemeal explanation for what Color Magic is all about and why there's such trouble between the differing factions will have you losing interest fast.

A big letdown for me was the characterization, especially Emma. While the whiny, emo protagonist Thomas was bad enough- granted he had a sense of urgency with his condition, but that only seemed to come whenever the author arbitrarily decided she needed to insert some drama- Emma almost felt like a betrayal. Maybe I missed something, but the sudden reveal of Emma as a black woman killed any further interest I had. It felt cheap & forced, especially when there was not even a hint to this beforehand, so why the deception? To make Thomas seem more sympathetic and juxtapose the rivals/bad guys as more eeeevil. When you club your readers upside the head with cheap tricks to try and make them feel for the characters, you've lost.

This is my first Pratchett, and I had so much fun.

It was all the elements: the zanny world, all the stabs at our world's and several sub-types of fantasies usual conventions, Rincewind's quality of "Luck's *shhhhhhhh!* The Lady's plaything" and Twoflower's perfect embodiment of the "too oblivious and exited to get it" tourist. And the luggage. The luggage was awesome, and the way it kept coming back the gift that kept on giving.

It ends in a cliff-hanger, but I'm not too anxious over it, because I was on the ride for the humour more than closure.

And apparently, this is not the best to be had in the Discworld... Sold on the author.