Dragons & Jetpacks discussion

I used the British spelling -- happy?

I read this a while ago. It's more episodic than a normal book, and has a cliffhanger concluded by The Light Fantastic.

I loved the Luggage and bit about insurance.

Thanks for using the correct spelling:-). It's English language not British but anyway .
I love Pratchett and have read most of his books multiple times. While this starts the series it's not my favourite by a long way. I generally feel the series only gets properly going around Mort and Guards Guards , here's where Death and Sam Vimes , Pratchetts best characters appear in there proper form for the first time. There are glimpses of Death in Colour of Magic but its only a vague shadow of the great character Pratchett develops. I do like Rincewind , he's a bit one dimensional and never really evolves but he's a fun fall guy. Pratchett plays with a few tropes here but is only really starting on stuff he masters later on.
Still worth a read but I generally tell people to start later in Discworl and then come back to this .

This is still a good introduction to the world. I think it was the third Discworld I read. I've since gone in order and am up to Soul Music.

it's an odd one , depending on who you ask where to start a lot of Pratchett fans who are reading almost from when the first books came out scream this books virtues and as the correct start point , people who came to the series later generally push for different books.
Agree its a good intro in many ways, it sets up the geography of the world really well and the humour of the rest for the series is there.

On a side note I'm jealous of you getting to read through for the first time. It's a sad thing that I will never get to open a brand new Discworld book again.

On another side note have many seen the sky TV adaption which covers this and The Light Fantastic.
Always thought the really screwed up on Rincewinds casting, he should have been a lot younger than David Jason. I like David Jason but it altered the character a bit too much . Rincewinds prime trait is cowardice accompanied by running and David Jason wasn't up for the running

I'm also reading Discworld for the first time (started last autumn) and I am savouring those books, spreading them out, slowly slowly, I'll make it last years :D. I started with Colour of Magic, and actually think it does a good job of setting the tone and the world. It doesn't flow so well, plotwise, but going in I knew that, so it didn't put me off.

The first one I read was Men at Arms when I was about 12 or 13 just because I liked the cover in the library. Then I read all the rest mostly in a random order. I keep meaning to do a reread in order sometime, not sure I'll get time to start this month though.

From what I remember The Colour of Magic is one of the books I really enjoyed. I love Rincewind and Twoflower. I wasn't so keen on the later books really, ones like Making Money and Going Postal etc.

Rincewind reminds me a bit of Arthur Dent.

I love the Discworld books but agree with spacing them out, I think they would loose something if they were read back to back. I love the character of luggage more than Rincewind. There is something about it that just makes me laugh, maybe it’s the vet nurse in me.
This is definitely not one of my favorites of the series. I found it a bit disjointed and a bit rough compared to the books later in the series which makes sense.
Did anyone ever play the computer games? They were funny, and I can never read about Ankmorpork without hearing a David Attenborough voice talking about The Shades.

I never knew there were computer games. I only found Discworld relatively recently.

Yeah, they were on Pc and of the point and click solve the quest kind of games. Along the same lines as The Secret of Monkey Island type. I’m not sure they would still be around now, it must have been about 20 years back now..

My son got me an old Windows XP laptop I'm hoping to get working so I can play some of my old games that I really liked.

I very much enjoyed this book. I read it a few years ago and I still need to get to book 2. It kind of made me think of an author goes on an acid trip and this was the result, which was a lot of fun.

It's been a while since I first read this and I still love it! The luggage is by far my favourite character but I'd completely forgotten about some of the characters like the water troll who is so nice and has such a sad story. I hope The Light Fantastic is a BOTM soon since now I want to read the rest.

Paul wrote: "On another side note have many seen the sky TV adaption which covers this and The Light Fantastic.
Always thought the really screwed up on Rincewinds casting, he should have been a lot younger tha..."

Yes, I was also disappointed with the casting. David Jason was great as Death's butler Arthur in the Hogfather but he just wasn't Rincewind. I always thought Chris O'Dowd or Stephen Merchant would have been a better choice.

Definitely read the other books as well if you liked this one! This one is known to be by far the weakest of them all, there's some very wonderful stuff and even more lovable characters in the rest of the series. :-)

Dawn , you have it spot on with Stephen Merchant I think. Would be a great Rincewind. David Jason was great in Hogfather I agree.

well, if someone wants to know what Discworld is typically like, I wouldn't recommend this for a taste. But I did start with it.

Helps to have read Sword and Sorcery of the era.

This was weak. It wasn't bad and has many things i liked but it was average. I'm gonna keep reading this books because i heard the series gers really good but this one was just ok.

Definitely keeping going. I think there is a discworld book/subseries for everyone.My personal preference are the watch books.

It gets different. If you don't like this one, I would not go on to The Light Fantastic, but probably Mort. Discworld is more like a setting than a series, and Mort starts one of the internal series.