The Colour of Magic

Discworld, Book 1

By: Terry Pratchett

Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy

Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin. The audiobook of The Colour of Magic is read by Colin Morgan (Merlin; Testament of Youth; Belfast). BAFTA and Golden Globe award-winning actor Bill Nighy (Love Actually; Pirates of the Caribbean; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) reads the footnotes, and Peter Serafinowicz (Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace; Shaun of the Dead) stars as the voice of Death. Featuring a new theme tune composed by James Hannigan.

'It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination....'

Somewhere between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a magical world not totally unlike our own. Except for the fact that it travels through space on the shoulders of four giant elephants who in turn stand on the shell of an astronomically huge star turtle, of course.

Rincewind is the world's worst wizard who has just been handed a very important job: to look after the world's first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land. Unfortunately, their journey across the Disc includes facing robbers, monsters, mercenaries, and Death himself.

And the whole thing's just a game of the gods that might send them over the edge....

You can listen to the Discworld novels in any order, but The Colour of Magic is the first book in the Wizards series. The Colour of Magic is the first book in the Discworld series and was published in 1983. Some elements of the Discworld universe may reflect this. 

©1983 Terry Pratchett (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"If you've never read a Discworld novel, what's the matter with you?" (Guardian)

"Pratchett uses his other world to hold up a distorting mirror to our own." (The Times)

TERRIBLE Narration!

Look, I’m a true Kevin here. I’ve read all of Pratchett but I CANNOT do this narration! He is SO slow! It honestly rips away all of the wit and humor. I will also say I have to seriously strain to understand his accent, being an American. All of the delivery falls flat. He doesn’t seem to “get it” like Planer and Briggs did! I’ve had this preordered for the longest time and was SO excited about all the redos, but I guess I’ll have to keep on listening to the tin-can versions instead!

Narration is weird, not sure I can finish

One of my favorite stories, tainted by poor narration. I'm 2 hours in and thinking about just returning the book. Almost feel like the older, echo laden version is better than this. Such a shame. Pre-ordered and had high expectations!

A Great Classic Undermined by Narration

I was excited to see the audiobooks for the series were being rereleased as it's become difficult to track down the older recordings. Unfortunately, the choices made by the narrator here detract pretty heavily from the story. Part of the joy of discworld is how hilariously funny the series can be, but the narration here is overly serious and dramatic. Morgan is an excellent actor, but he delivers this story as though it were a more typical fantasy novel. The result is a performance that, to me, completely missed the point.
I'd recommend this series to anyone, but would STRONGLY steer them towards the older recordings (Nigel Planer especially does a remarkable job with the text.) Stay away from these newer recordings as they by and large "miss the point", and do the story a disservice. I suppose this recording could be interesting to those who've ever had a morbid curiosity to hear Douglas Adams read with the seriousness of Asimov and, for a lark, wanted to try dipping their toes into fantasy.

Didn’t like the new narrator

This isn’t the strongest discworld book, perhaps not so surprising given that it is the first. The narrator brings it down, as many of the new narrators do. I preferred the old one, as they maintain the humour of the book, perhaps simply by being quite matter of fact about it. The new narrators are just too dramatic, and slow.

Thinking I might buy the old ones I don’t already have before audible makes them unavailable for purchase. I was holding of on it because I had high hopes for the re-recording

Superb work!

Since originally hearing they were redoing the audiobooks I was hyped! They did an amazing job with the performance overall. For anyone already a fan of Terry's work this is a must!

Outstanding

Colin Morgan was a brilliant choice as narrator. Love the way he differentiates between so many characters without missing a beat. And of course the story is still wonderful.

So Much Fun!

Colin Morgan is simply a superbly gifted storyteller. Much care is taken with every syllable. The character voices are unique and engaging. The cadence, inflection, and nuance of his performance contribute to a thoroughly enjoyable and immersive listening experience. Oh, and he has excellent comedic delivery as well. I laughed a lot. Good, good fun. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

Love this -

They've brought life and magic to this story. Very enjoyable performance that's really drawn me in bit by bit. Well paced, engaging, and overflowing with inflection and emotion. I can tell they cared quite a lot about this work.

Absolutely Love It!

This is some of the best fantasy I've ever read! it is so well written and a delight to listen to. I love how absurd it is at times and how seriously it's still treated by the author. Terry Pratchett was a genius!

Masterpiece

First, wow. Wonderful performance amd reading by the team. The story is like being a spectator to one of the most fantastic DnD campaigns ever put on. There's an air of comedy to everything in this story but I couldn't help but to be captivated by the whole story. It is wonderful. From start to finish. I will certainly be reading/listening to more Terry Pratchett.

Impressive.

I don't know Terry Pratchett's books. This would explain why I really did not enjoy the first hour of listening. .I normally enjoy Colin Morgan's narration skill, but I really disliked that first hour and was bitterly disappointed. The next day I did some research into these books - I very quickly realised that they were a very specialised fantasy genre and that Colin's voices were " spot on."
I listened again the next night - AND i LOVED BOTH THE BOOK, AND THE NARRATIION It just shows how wrong you can be without some background knowledge. I found myself laughing out loud at Prachett's skill in writing and Colin's superb narration.
And it also shows how wrong you can be if you make decisions too quickly.

Awful narration

I see the reviews for this are mostly very positive - to each his own, I guess - but if you also hated this version, you are not alone.

I have most of Terry Pratchetts books on Audible (Nigel Planer and Stephen Briggs) and listen to them repeatedly. The relaunched Witches books with Indira Varma work really well, so my problem isn’t with the new format. But the narration of this new version of The Colour of Magic is so terrible I couldn’t finish it.

The narrator seems to emphasise Every Single Word, so there is no shape to the sentences and all the wonderful little jokes are lost. None of the characters work for me and the Patrician in particular is just awful, with an overdone posh voice where every word seems to have an extra syllable at the end. Eventually I found I was just tuning out, so I returned this.

Fantastic beginning!

A fantastic start to the Rincewind series, bringing back great memories from reading the book. Thought the narrator did a brilliant job of making the story come to life with a variety of excellent character voices including Rincewind himself. Looking forward to the rest of the tales!

Excellent performance

If you haven't tried a Discworld book before the general advice is don't start here - it's really a setting for various series of books more than a series by itself, you can safely start elsewhere to find out if you like the world (I'd recommend Small Gods, Guards Guards or Going Postal) without needing to know the plot of this book. You can always return to this later if you like the world but this and it's second half The Light Fantastic are a bit odd and chaotic compared to the later books.

Morgan did an amazing job narrating this, every character has a distinctive voice and his narration voice is excellent. He also happily avoided giving Twoflower (the Disc's equivalent of an asian tourist) an offensive accent. I'm looking forward to trying his version of the rest of the Wizards series.

Thoroughly entertaining

This is not a book I would normally read but I found this a very enjoyable listen. What made it so good is the brilliant narration of Colin Morgan who brought the whole story and characters to life and made me want to listen to the rest of the series. His ability to draw the listener into a completely different world is wonderful - and a breath of fresh air.
Will now download the other books in the series.

The voices are epic

As someone whose listened to the Briggs and Plainer audios on repeat for years, I was a little nervous to dive into the discworld with someone new, but ye gods what an incredible performance from everyone involved especially the voice of death who sounds like a grumpy old cowboy or biker instead of a hollow echo. Amazing, just amazing.

Bring back the Nigel Planar versions

Please allow people to choose which version they would like to listen, the original planar versions or these

This version is rubbish, bring back the originals

The Nigel Planer and Stephen briggs readers were far Far FAR better. Even taking into account the hissy recordings of the originals, they are better read. The voices for the characters in these new recordings are beyond idiotic, they are really irritating. I find I am unable to download the versions I used to have on my previous phone, audible don't have them anymore. If I can buy the original ones from somewhere please tell me..

Spectacularly Dreadful Narration

A brilliant story ruined by inept badly thought out narration. Updating older recordings is a good idea…but then do it properly. Just adding recognised actors does not make an improvement. It looks like all the disc world books are being updated to this new formula. Audible….your about to ruin the series. Rather clean up the older recordings. Please rethink this.
The narrator is not right for this , his use of 101 voices with intermittent extras is baffling. Stephen Briggs and Nigel planner did this with Grace and fluidity….which this version does not. His idea of what they should sound like is so off the mark it’s incredible the Producer did not halt this. To use an analogy it’s like watching a gun shot on tv…but instead of hearing a bang you hear a cow moo. You know it’s just wrong.
I’m a simple enthusiast of audible for losing myself in a great story…..with good narration. Which this is not

Highly enjoyable

I was curious to find out how the notes would have been realized and I think that the sound effect is brilliant. It is perfectly managed to let the listener understand the difference of tone without taking them out of the main narration. The voice of Bill Nighy is always a joy to hear. The crowd of characters in Terry Prachett world is impressive in itself, but the ability of Colin Morgan to give a distinctive trait and characterization to each and every one of them is equally impressive. And not only to the characters, but also to the different tones of the narration. A kaleidoscope of intentions worthy of the colours of magic.