The main characters are Rincewind, a failed wizard from Unseen University, he can’t keep any spells in his head as one of the eight Great Spells is in there and Twoflower the Disc’s first tourist where in his homeland he isn’t very rich at all but in Ankh-Morpork (the city he first visits) he is incredibly wealthy and one rhinu, which is the currency he uses, is worth about a thousand gold pieces. Rincewind is told to look after Twoflower and make sure he has a good stay in Ankh-Morpork, by the cities Patriarch. But Twoflower wants to see dangerous things like dragons and pub brawls and heroes like Bravd the hublander and Hrun the barbarian.
Twoflower is a fat little man who has no sense of smell and he describes horrible farms and muddy fields as picturesque. Rincewind assumes Twoflower’s strange words like Quaint means disease ridden, picturesque means horrible looking and tourist must mean idiot. Aand his luggage, a chest made of sapient pearwood, (a very rare and expensive object often used in rich people’s tombs so they can have clean underwear in the afterlife) follows him everywhere on its hundreds of little legs. When the luggage eats people or anything else next time it opens its gone and when Twoflower puts his clothes in there they are clean the next time it is opened. Rincewind is a tall thin wizard who wears his wizard robes.
Twoflower goes around taking pictures of everything with his picture box, in which there’s a demon who paints what he sees. But when he sells insurance (inn-sewer-ants) to the owner of the “Broken Drum” inn. The inn’s owner soon burns down the inn along with the whole of the city of Ankh-Morpork and then Rincewind and Twoflower embark on a journey all round the Discworld in which they keep on escaping near death from trolls, dragons and more terrible things (commanded by the Gods in their game) and Twoflower doesn’t believe any harm will come of him at all and that people wouldn’t hurt him unless he did something to hurt them. Rincewind gets really annoyed and wants to go back to Ankh-Morpork but Twoflower won’t let him. Rincewind keeps on seeing death for he can see into the Octarine, (as well as cats) the eighth colour in the Discworld’s spectrum and only Death can claim a wizard, failed or not, and not one of his servants.
This book is a brilliant introduction to the Discworld series, which now has twenty eight books, and it grips you on every page with suspense, action and humour. The colour of magic should appeal to any good fantasy reader.
