★★★☆☆ The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett
Rincewind and Twoflower get a plot
The Light Fantastic
Terry Pratchett
Rincewind and Twoflower get a plot
The Light Fantastic is the second book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and also the second of the Rincewind subseries. It picks up where book 1, The Color of Magic left off.
If you read the first two books in order, which I would recommend, you may remember that TCOM ended in a cliff-hanger. Well, to be strictly accurate, it ended in a cliff-faller-offer. At the end of TCOM Rincewind and Twoflower were thrown off the edge of the Discworld (which has an edge because, strangely enough, it is shaped like a disc -- could this be more than coincidence?) Twoflower launched them deliberately because he wanted to see space.
So, that's where we are when The Light Fantastic begins. It turns out that great events are afoot in Discworld, and the Octavo is involved. The Octavo, you will remember, is the grimoire of the departed creator. It originally contained eight spells. One of them found its way into Rincewind's brain when he was a student at the Unseen University. He was kicked out for that, and was never able to learn another spell. No one, least of all Rincewind himself, knows what the spells of the Octavo do.
It appears, however, that the Octavo wants to get the Band back together. How, and what will happen if and when it succeeds, and above all, WHY, are the subjects of The Light Fantastic.
I enjoyed this more than TCOM, for the reason I already hinted at -- it has a plot. It's not just a bunch of random events. The world has been built, the characters introduced, and it hangs together as a story that's going somewhere, with a beginning (that would be TCOM), a middle, and an end. I don't think we're up to four stars yet, but we 're not far short of it.