The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett

Most of my pleasure reading comes from audiobooks, but this year I’m reincorporating time for print each day, alternating between a Discworld book and a not-Discworld book. For this series re-read, I’m going chronologically by pub date.

The Light Fantastic is the second in the series. Lots of Discworld fans will apologize for the first couple of books, observing that Terry Pratchett hadn’t yet entirely got his footing. That’s not exactly wrong, but early Pratchett is still delightful. The gentle social satire he’s best known for isn’t much on display, but you still get a fun adventure fantasy with laugh-out-loud moments.

Rincewind, the wizard school dropout, is on the run with Twoflower, the tourist, because people keep trying to kill them. Rincewind only knows one spell and he’s never uttered it, so he can’t defend himself with magic, but he’s excellent at running away.

If you haven’t read Discworld yet, this book might not be the place to start. Lots of people bounce off it. But you might like it just fine. I do. I’m less concerned about which book you start with, as long as you start somewhere.