VI.18.02. Read The Light Fantastic

Date Accomplished: 11 Jan. 2011

The Light Fantastic: Corgi Books Edition

Pratchett Journal

“… descriptive  writing is very rarely entirely accurate.” (18)

“… Trymon knew all about rules and had always considered they were for making, not obeying.” (38)

“… the trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only too easy to imagine…” (81)

“… space is not really big, it is simply somewhere to be big in.  Planets are big, but planets are meant to be big and there is nothing clever about being the right size.” (222)

“Ank-Morpork!  Pearl of Cities!  This is not a completely accurate description, of course – it was not round and shiny – but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mullosc.” (227)

“The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see?  You’ve got to stop.  You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.” (281)

The Light Fantastic

The Light Fantastic essentially continues on from where Pratchett left off in The Colour of Magic.  Rincewind and Twoflowers are reunited on the Disk, and are once again being chased and hunted by various people.  This is probably one of the more fantasy-esque of Pratchett’s novels (even though they are all considered fantasy…) and it ends in a try dramatic fashion (after some typical bumbling by the characters to get the pronunciation of the world-saving spell right).

I say this novel is more fantasy-esque than others, because it is after this novel that Pratchett seems to have a general satirical theme.  The previous book, The Colour of Magic was satirizing tourism and the fantasy genre, but The Light Fantastic, though had satirical elements in it, did not appear to have an over-arching theme: just a good adventure.  But that’s okay, because it is still a very funny and enjoyable book.