I think I would go for The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic.
Not sure if I would call them underrated, but I don’t think they have the same following as the later books. Maybe it’s deserved - as we know, they were written ‘by a younger, stupider author’ or something along those lines. The world-building only began there, PTerry was not quite yet in his full-on god-like-genius-with-language-stride (just let me have that one…!) and it’s more of an easy read, ligher kind of fun. Not quite so touching, or deep, or touching on so many important themes through the perfect mix of humour, sadness and kindness. Which I do agree with.
However, I have read them both as soon as they came out in my country, I think the Czech translation for both. And I remember reading and laughing out loud so much I cried, soooo many times. So did my father, who also read them around the same time. And my sister.
The laughing out loud part throughout the entire book was not there in the later books, at least not for me. Of course I laughed at parts, and felt things at other parts, sometimes hopefully even when The Author planned. But not throughout the entire books anymore. And for that, these two stand out for me.
Now come on, someone, tell me why I’m wrong so we can get a nice conversation going!
Someone compared Pterry’s ability to mould language to Shakespeare, if only I remember where I heard or read this comparison.
I have recency bias with The Colour of Magic, reread it fairly recently and it’s quite brilliant, although the first 10-15 pages were difficult to get through because they were somehow opaque. So many characters I just met talking to each other and about each other, and it was often unclear to me who or what they were talking about. Then Twoflower arrived and saved it.
Hmmm I’ll start.
I think I would go for The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. Not sure if I would call them underrated, but I don’t think they have the same following as the later books. Maybe it’s deserved - as we know, they were written ‘by a younger, stupider author’ or something along those lines. The world-building only began there, PTerry was not quite yet in his full-on god-like-genius-with-language-stride (just let me have that one…!) and it’s more of an easy read, ligher kind of fun. Not quite so touching, or deep, or touching on so many important themes through the perfect mix of humour, sadness and kindness. Which I do agree with.
However, I have read them both as soon as they came out in my country, I think the Czech translation for both. And I remember reading and laughing out loud so much I cried, soooo many times. So did my father, who also read them around the same time. And my sister. The laughing out loud part throughout the entire book was not there in the later books, at least not for me. Of course I laughed at parts, and felt things at other parts, sometimes hopefully even when The Author planned. But not throughout the entire books anymore. And for that, these two stand out for me.
Now come on, someone, tell me why I’m wrong so we can get a nice conversation going!
Someone compared Pterry’s ability to mould language to Shakespeare, if only I remember where I heard or read this comparison.
I have recency bias with The Colour of Magic, reread it fairly recently and it’s quite brilliant, although the first 10-15 pages were difficult to get through because they were somehow opaque. So many characters I just met talking to each other and about each other, and it was often unclear to me who or what they were talking about. Then Twoflower arrived and saved it.