SPOILERS The Light Fantastic Discussion **Spoilers**

[RoninJonny]

I always took it as Rincewind thinking he hated Twoflower (probably really did at the start) but he found himself feeling sorry that Twoflower was leaving at the end and that was him really realizing he was going to miss him. So yes I would say that they were friends at the end but I'd add that I think even Rincewind was surprised by it.

 

[swreader]

Do you think that Rincewind and Twoflower were friends by the end of this book?

Rincewind seems to have disliked Twoflower through most of the two books, yet he seems disappointed when Twoflower decides to leave.

What do you think?

I don't think that Rincewind either likes or dislikes Twoflower for a good part of both CofM and LF. He's got a job to do--to show the visitor around and keep him safe (as requested by the Emperor & and passed on by the Patrician). It's not clear to me whether he was chosen because he was available or what Terry thought of him initially.

It seems puzzling to me that Rincewind is described as being unable to function as a wizard because he somehow managed to open the door to the room where the Octavo is kept, the "spell" (which one is not mentioned) takes refuge (from what is not entirely clear) in Rincewind's mind. We are told, in this book, that part of the reason is to keep the wizards from using the eight spells too soon. And it is Rincewind's ability to finally (with help) read all the spells aloud that "saves" the Discworld. But since the spell has gone, why is he unable to function as a wizard thereafter?
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Edited to add the following:

I'm not sure that Terry ever has had a sense of Rincewind's character. According to the Wiki article on Rincewind, Terry
Pratchett has said that Rincewind's job is "to meet more interesting people", saying that there is not much he can do with a character who's a coward and doesn't care who knows it. Pratchett noted that one of his major problems was that he has a "lack of an inner monologue."

 

[Willem]

To quote from the Office christmas special:
The people you work with, are people you were just thrown together with. You don’t know them, it wasn’t your choice. And yet you spend more time with them then you do your friends or your family, but probably all you’ve got in common, is the fact that you walk around on the same bit of carpet for eight hours a day.

I'd say Twoflower considers Rincewind a friend, but not vice versa. R does care for T but more in a colleague kind of way (I wouldn't call Twoflower the boss/employer even though he's the one paying Rincewind). I keep in touch with some of my old colleagues but only a select few. However, should I find myself transported to the country of those I didn't keep contact with and find them needing my help in their revolution, I'd still care about what happens to them

Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome?

 

[Durvasha]

Funnily, this is the book I started the Discworld journey with.It was the first fantasy comedy that I came across. When I first picked it up, I was picking up a fantasy on wizards, not a spoof on fantasy . When I finished reading, I realized that non-stop nonsense spoof of fantasy IS fun ; bought and read all the DW novels that I could lay my hands on. Too bad that I moved country and had to leave them behind. Can't reread anymore.

The blurb did not tell me that it is a sequel, so I bought it in ignorance. But I enjoyed it a lot. I did pick up the first one later, but didnot enjoy that one as much as this, and I maynot have stuck with the series if I had started at book1. Perhaps because of this, I have a soft spot for Rincewind books. I enjoy them; i enjoy Rincewind's running from everything, everyone. I loved Twoflower, though I hated the change in character in the next book that Twoflower appears again. The Druids, the various faculty rivaly, the cottage, the interactions between various UU commando teams; I liked all of them. I am just glad that it didnot have the dimensional relocation as in the Colour of magic. I hate books with parallel universes crossover.

In a way, I have realized after finding this forum, that Rincewind books have made me miss some of the deeper aspects of Terry's writings. I pick them up for comedy (satires, puns and outright jokes) not for the deeper social comdies. I get the latter but I enjoy the former much more.

-Durvasha

 

[Tonyblack]

I'd agree that this book is better that Colour of Magic - although, COM was the first Discworld book I read. My younger brother practically forced me to read it.

There is perhaps the biggest gap time-wise between COM and TLF. That is partly down to the fact that Terry was holding down a full time job at the time and writing in his spare time - but I'd like to think that the gap gave him some serious time to think about where there Discworld was going as a series. Presumably he didn't know it was going to be a series when he wrote the first one.

 

[stripy_tie]

It must be 10 or more years since I last read LF, but I remember enjoying it very much.
Sure, it is mostly a funny fantasy novel without the depth of later works. However, I have no problem reading something that is just funny - and funny it definitely is.
Only got it in English last Christmas or birthday and didn't read it yet since there was other unread stuff on my pile.

As for the trolls - they seem to be inspired by Tolkien's trolls (which are based on the Norwegian trolls?). On the other hand this really old troll, who has become a mountain seems to be an original idea by Pratchett (but then, apart from Pratchett and Tolkien I don't read any fantasy) and shows one of the typical traits of Pratchett, which is to think things to an end (often with a humorous logic) , which some authors just introduce because they need something to rescue their plot - funnily enough I can't think of a good example for this right now, but they're often in there. (A not so good one would be the Counting trees: Men fell them and count the rings to determine their age → Evolution kicks in and the trees develop numbers → Men fell the trees to get house numbers; ah, wait, a good thing: fundamental laws are also true for magic - thus you can't just create something out of nothing or have to be careful not to get your brain squeezed out of your ears when using a magic lever. This prevents him, at the same time, from overusing magic as a type of deus ex machina - something J.K. Rowling didn't achieve in such an elegant way and which caused some inelegant work-arounds (you can't create food or money with magic).)
However, in the beginning of the series Pratchett often mentioned the dislike of trolls for the sun. It is even mentioned in TMC - somewhere he says (when he introduces the troll bodyguards of the President(?) of the Merchants' Guild) that they were good as bodyguards and you only had some higher expenses for sunblocker.
The sunblocker trolls need is mentioned again in Moving Pictures. I think after that it is more or less "common knowledge" and Terry doesn't mention it anymore.

Definitely agree about the magic in HP, it's probably the weakest aspect of the series. All of the characters just seem to accept that it's "magic" and never mention anything about it ever again even though it's supposedly what their entire world is built upon. This is coming from someone who loved the books.

Moving on swiftly before Tony nabs me for going off topic. This book has a very different feel from most of the later Pratchetts but the progression is very fast (he went from this to Equal Rites to Mort).

I wouldn't say this is one of my favourites but it's got a lot of what i feel has been missing from the very recent books like UA and Snuff which is this pure imagination and energy. They look very dull and lifeless compared to it.

 

[author3]

This morning I decided to read The Light Fantastic again and I'd completely forgotten how good it was.I haven't read it in 3 years so I was forgetting most of the plot and I always used to dislike this book because i was basing it on The Colour of Magic but now after only reading about 7 pages I can remember really enjoying it.
The Light Fantastic is a brilliant book it is now in my top 5

 

[Tonyblack]

You have two weeks to read or reread Reaper Man for the discussion starting on Monday 2nd January 2012.

 

[rockershovel]

I wasn't a tremendous fan of the early DW books when I first read them, and that remains true. The previous comment about being too obviously influenced by Douglas Adams about sums it up, and quite a lot of the early characters aren't really properly realised.

Rincewind is an odd character, in that he is a one-note character who essentially serves as a plot device, a continuity device mainly. The Dungeon Dimensions are a bit like that, too.

Eric/Faust was the one that caught my attention, along with Guards!Guards! which is probbaly the first DW book properly recognisable as such

 

[Tonyblack]

You have one week to read or reread Reaper Man for the discussion starting on Monday 2nd January 2012.

 

[S@mwich]

I guess I see the couloir of magic as a 'the light fantastic 1' rather than the light fantastic being a 'couloir of magic 2'

 

[=Tamar]

I guess I see the colour of magic as a 'the light fantastic 1' rather than the light fantastic being a 'colour of magic 2'

I feel pretty much the same way. I seriously disliked The Colour of Magic and wasn't going to read Pratchett again, but someone talked me into reading Equal Rites and I liked it. Some years later I read The Light Fantastic and that made up for the ending of the first book, so for me, TCoM is definitely only part one of The Light Fantastic.

I did have to go back and check thoroughly to be sure, but it's true: Rincewind first has a hat in, I think, Mort. In TCoM, he tells the dryad that he lost his hat, but the narration states that he lied when he said that. I think he got the hat after he went back to UU at the end of TLF. There wasn't anyone senior enough to tell him he couldn't have one - after all, he beat the then-chancellor in a fight, so he technically was the new Chancellor! Fortunately he also knew what that entailed, so he quit in favor of being the Librarian's assistant.

 

[=Tamar]

By the way, I thought of an explanation within-story for why Trymon's hair color changed.

It's given as black when he's described by the author, as seen by the wizards. It's given as blond (fair-haired) as Rincewind remembers him from his school years - they were in the same class. Rincewind is now said by Terry to be "about 40" (though actually if we can go by the airplane-switch in TCoM he was probably closer to 33 then) and Trymon just about remembers Rincewind. Because Trymon remembers him, I think they're close to the same age (though students apparently arrived at any age from about five to 14).

I think a good retcon for the hair would be that Trymon started dyeing his hair to look more impressively wizardly. On the other hand, sometimes people's hair does get darker with age. Either way, the wizards who were present when Rincewind referred to Trymon as fair-haired didn't react, but that could be explained by stress - Rincewind had just opened the door to free them from the Octavo room.

Looking at it from outside the text, the standard cliche for a powerful character is grey eyes and black hair. Trymon had grey eyes; he had also "elevated greyness to an art." Sort of an early version of an Auditor. (There are a lot of things in TLF that are used later!) In the standard cliches, the combination of grey eyes and blond hair is a much weaker character. Second-guessing, I think it's possible that Terry decided Trymon's image had to be weakened a bit to make it more convincing that Rincewind could win. Symbolically it might mean that Trymon didn't start out all that bad, he became what he was over the years of surviving in UU.

 

[raptornx01]

Ah, but can you explain, in story, the differences with Vetinari?

 

[=Tamar]

Ah, but can you explain, in story, the differences with Vetinari?

Oh, well... lots of fans have found explanations. Such as:
Vetinari took over fairly young. He may have had to do a lot to convince the assorted power factors that he was not going to upset the system too much, at first. Either stress or faking being just another typical Patrician type could be a reason for having put on a little weight, which could have been deliberately exaggerated by wearing a fat-suit when appearing (briefly) at the parties (remember there was a Conga-line at the party where Death was trying to understand fun, but there is no mention of the Patrician actually appearing). It's faintly possible that he even had special gloves made to make his hands look fat. (Or he ate something that made his hands swell briefly.... that happens to me if I eat something I'm allergic to, and it would last for a short interview.)
If he really did gain that much weight, he later went on an extreme diet, and in order to stay thin (and possibly in emotional reaction against having gained the weight at first) he has stayed on a fairly rigorous maintenance diet. Hence the appearance of living on water and dry crackers.

 

[Dotsie]

Or, it wasn't Vetinari?

 

[Tonyblack]

Terry has gone on record as saying it was Vetinari. Yes, he appears to be a totally different character, but think of him as a prototype, rather than a different person. Like Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites.

 

[Dotsie]

I'd like to go on record saying that Terry doesn't know as much about Discworld as the fans do If we say it's not Vetinari, then it's not!

 

[raisindot]

I'd like to go on record saying that Terry doesn't know as much about Discworld as the fans do If we say it's not Vetinari, then it's not!

Watch what you're saying: You're just asking for....fanfiction.

 

[raptornx01]

I believe Terry's quote was, "it was Vetinari written by a less experienced author"

One of the other theories was that it was Snapcase, which could fit i guess. Especially with the timeframe as purposed by Night watch.

also, it wasn't just the weight, but he was described as wearing jewelery as well, something vetinari later on wouldn't do (even his signet ring, which he could wear under a glove).

But I take Terry's word on it.