I guess you could think of a world more improbable than Discworld is. It's not that hard really, but what is hard is to make that improbable world seem real even when the reader knows a disc-shaped world riding the space on the backs of four gigantic elephants standing on the back of a gigantic turtle is at another end of the probability spectrum. Even the people living in the world know how improbable it is, but what can you do. It still exists and is as real as anything you could imagine. That's part of the magic Pratcherr manages to weave in his first Discworld book, by telling us how silly it all is, the world turns more real, as nothing is as real as silliness.
From the get-go, strange things are afoot in the largest city of the Disc, Ankh-Morpork: it receives its very first, and the very fist for Discworld, tourist. Twoflower of the Agatean Empire, followed by his Magical Pearwood trunk Luggage, arrives at the city of his dreams to experience matters he has only dreamt of during his days as an insurance clerk. A stranger with a magical chest seemingly full of gold obviously attracts the seedier side of Ankh-Morpork immediately, which by happenstance brings Twoflower together with a failed wizard Rincewind, who knows only one spell, which has made it impossible for him to learn any further magic as it has taken up all the space needed to learn any other spells.
The end result of the tourists bumbling in the city we already know: the great fire of Ankh-Morpork, caused by Twoflower selling the very first fire insurance to the proprietor of the Broken Drum tavern, during which Rincewind and the tourist escape Ankh-Morpork. Together Rincewind and Twoflower leg it towards the city of Quirm, only to end up at the sinister temple of the Bel Shamharoth, all this because they happen to be the subjects of a board game played by the bored gods of the Discworld, who are, like any atheist would quickly find out, very real.
At the temple, they meet the shambling horror but are luckily helped by the calculative barbarian, Hrun, who agrees to tag along, after Rincewind promises him a plethora of photographs taken with Twoflowers imp powered camera. The trio ends up at Wyrmberg, an upside-down mountain, which is a home of dragon riders whose leaders can create dragons from the improbability of magic.
Dragons exist only if people believe in them. As it happens, Twoflowers does, a lot. This little factoid helps them escape the Wyrmberg which happens to be in the midst of a power struggle with its old leader declining to cut his mortal coil as long as it takes for one of his three kids to get rid of the two others and take the throne.
Twoflowers rescues Rincewind with the help of a dragon he imagined while in his cell. The great, green wyrm flies the duo off, as Hrun finds his destiny on the side of the new queen of Wyrmberg. As a side route, terrified Rincewind manages to teleport them into real-world as passengers in an aeroplane, but this interval is short and they end in the ocean near the rim of the Discworld.
Multiple, undescribed adventures later, they are finally caught by a sea troll Tethis, who is guarding the great Circumfence, a network built around the rim of the Disc by Krullians, who have built their dynasty on the salvage caught by it. Krullians are also in the midst of a great expedition to find out what sex the Great A'Tuin, the space turtle, is. As their final journey, Twoflower and Rincewind end in the expedition vehicle and the last we see of Rincewind, for the time being, is him falling after the ship, space around him.
The Colour of Magic could be described as an overview of Discworld. It is an introduction to the bizarre and wonderful world, where 1 in a million chances happen regularly. Rincewind is living proof of this, as Death himself, a regular character in the Discworld series, could testify. Even Rincewind himself knows, he should have died many times over during his adventure with Twoflower. As a wizard he saw Death often enough, that being the privilege of even a failed wizard student.
At surface level, The Colour of Magic is a fantasy parody, but you don't really have to dig too deep to find out it is much more than a mere parody. See, it is, as a fantasy story, far more believable than most other more serious fantasy tales. It is the silliness and the absurdity and the willingness to embrace them and mix them in equally well written serious fantasy, drama and philosophical musings that make it work. When you don't have to suppress your belief when things happen, the things happening, no matter how absurd they are, seem more real.
To make unbelievably believable is what any fantasy author should be able to do. It doesn't really matter if the style is a comedy or serious fantasy, it still should be something the reader should be able to believe at least on some level. And I'm not claiming making The Colour of Magic a comedy is somehow an easy way of achieving it. No, in many ways it might even be the harder way around as comedy can backfire gloriously.
By embracing the fantasy cliches, the muscle-bound barbarians, flimsily clad women and crazy magic, Pratchett both grounds and ungrounds the world he has built. He makes you expect the unexpected, making the events more enjoyable. Rincewind is an unlikely hero, as he is not a hero at all, just someone, who is very good at staying alive against all odds. He doesn't want to be in the mess he ends up in, but he still, more or less, tries to ride the wave.
The story begins in The Colour of Magic is concluded in The Light Fantastic. The Colour of Magic is, despite ending in a sort of a cliffhanger, a full story in its own right. It ends in a point that is utterly satisfying even if it might leave you wanting more.
And more there was. A book that had an initial print count of 506 copies stemmed up a franchise that had 41 books with over 80 million copies sold worldwide. Not too shabby for a book Pratchett wanted to be the Blazing Saddles of the fantasy genre. Because if you ask me, Pratchett overshadows Mel Brooks by far.
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