Review: The Light Fantastic

The wizard Rincewind falls off the edge of Discworld, his planet, which is a disk balanced on four giant elephants on top of the Great A’Tuin, the giant space turtle. Except Rincewind once read a book he shouldn’t have, and as a result one of its Eights Great Spells escaped into his head. This spell saves his life, and launches him into an adventure involving druids, other wizards, trolls, mercenaries, the Tourist Twoflower, Twoflower’s sentient and rather violent Luggage, the four Horsemen, the ancient barbarian Cohen, Dungeon Dimensions, and the quickly approaching red star which may or may not be the Apocalypse. And somehow, Rincewind and his Spell are the keys to it all.


Entertainment: ★★★★★

This might just be the funniest book I've read this year. I literally laughed out loud. Every page had me cracking up as it threw in another witty twist or random side character or crazy description of Discworld.

Plot: ★★★

I have to say, the “plot” was mostly nonexistent. For 241 pages, the main characters collided wildly with each other and with a whole host of side characters and apparently random events. It wasn’t until the final few pages of the book that the characters weren’t just running around, haphazardly destroying things. Regardless, what plot there was I enjoyed very much.

Characters: ★★★★★

Just for their incredible, ironically-stereotypical hilarity. Twoflower and the Luggage, particularly, were really excellent. Normally I don’t like it when I don’t connect with characters, but in this story I was happy to just sit back and watch them create chaos.

Writing: ★★★★★

Pratchett’s writing is witty, intelligent, and makes fun of just about everything and everybody. It has the perfect balance of irreverence and sarcasm that had me laughing at each new page.

Overall: Five stars.  A really excellent book.  Read it.