Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
With that said, these differences are key when considering this setting. For example, our world is round—well, mostly round. The Discworld is as flat as its name suggests. And while our world tra...
Narrator Point of View
Sometimes it can be pretty difficult to determine the narrative technique of a novel. If you've had difficulty with this in the past, though, don't worry about it with The Color of Magic—the hard...
Genre
We wracked our brains for hours trying to come up with a more original genre to label The Color of Magic with, but sometimes it's best to just go with the classics. Is there any better genre label...
Tone
So many phrases come to mind when thinking of the tone of The Color of Magic: funny, hilarious, cheeky, sly, just-wicked-enough, good-natured, and whimsical—to name a few. It's the tone of every...
Writing Style
Compared to most fantasy novels, Pratchett is totally rocking an informal style here. Most fantasies, especially in the subgenre of epic fantasy, are written like they're meant to be historical tex...
What's Up With the Title?
The color of magic is octarine, and it's a shade of greenish-purple. At least, that's what it looks like to Rincewind (4.4.28). But what does greenish-purple have to do with the book The Color of M...
What's Up With the Ending?
Like so many other aspects of the novel, the ending of The Color of Magic is a remix of the typical fantasy ending. It plays with those well-known beats but changes them just enough to come up with...
Tough-o-Meter
If there were a Best Friends to Readers Everywhere award, Pratchett would win it, hands down, year after year, and every year for the foreseeable future. Seriously—it would probably get to the po...