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The Light Fantastic Book Review

The Light Fantastic is a 1986 comic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett. It was the second entry in the Discworld series, serving as a solid sequel to the first novel.

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“No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person“

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As it moves towards a seemingly inevitable collision with a malevolent red star, the Discworld has only one possible savior. Unfortunately, this happens to be the singularly inept and cowardly wizard called Rincewind, who was last seen falling off the edge of the world. This book functions as a direct sequel to ‘The Colour of Magic’ and the two novels are pretty much of similar quality.

While its predecessor was more episodic in nature, this one is more streamlined. Gone are the chapters and what we got instead is a story that flows better and is actually more engaging to read. The mysticism of the first novel is not as pronounced here and I missed the character of Death, who was a scene-stealer before. But what this novel has in spades is adventure and comedy.

Yes, the comedic elements can become overwhelming to the point that the novel verged on becoming self-parodic at times. There are certain stretches in the story that are difficult to take seriously as the humorous moments are so ridiculous and over-the-top. With that being said, Pratchett was highly adept at executing these humorous situations and his dialogue and observations are particularly potent and amusing. There is for instance this one passage where he describes the female character by making fun of her overly sexualized clothing. That self-awareness and parodying of conventional fantasy tropes made for such a funny read.

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The storytelling is more confident here, though there are moments where I wished for even more world building. For example, we here get introduced to several orders of wizards and as somebody who is very much into wizardry and witchcraft in my fantasy stories, I adored these elements, but I wanted even more of them. The novel is stacked with so much story for such a short length for better and for worse.

I loved Rincewind. In The Light Fantastic we finally get to see him casting some spells, which was so much fun. He is still an entertaining curmudgeon, but his arc was fantastic and I was so happy for him to be going into that magic university at the end of this story. Twoflower is just as silly as he was before. The two share such a beautiful friendship that toward the end becomes genuinely endearing.

The Hansel and Gretel subplot was so entertaining and charming while all the scenes in the dungeons were my favorite. The action is excellent in this novel, though Pratchett still isn’t the strongest at pacing and structure in his storytelling. But he is phenomenal at descriptive passages and at creating this charming world full of memorable personalities, enchanted items and magic itself.

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Cohen and Bethan are reliably amusing, though they needed more development overall, but the villains proved to be quite competent and memorable. The book still lacked sophistication and thematic resonance, but at least the humor was mostly terrific and a lot of the dialogue and monologues made me chuckle throughout. The imagery is often unique and fun while making a lightweight version of what otherwise would have been an epic fantasy tale was a great choice that made this entire series more unique.