The Light Fantastic
core novel 1986 Discworld
Record
| First published | 1986 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.01 (173,941 ratings, collected 2026-09-11) |
| Page count | 277 |
| First-edition ISBN | 0861402030 |
Synopsis
Picking up immediately after the previous volume, The Colour of Magic, this novel opens with wizard Rincewind, tourist Twoflower and their sentient luggage falling off the edge of the Discworld, only to be saved when a powerful spellbook called the Octavo reshapes reality around one of its eight great spells, which has lodged itself in Rincewind's mind. Death himself warns the wizards of Ankh-Morpork that a huge red star is approaching and will destroy the world unless all eight spells from the Octavo are read aloud together. With rival factions of wizards chasing Rincewind to seize the spell trapped in his head, he and Twoflower flee across the Disc, crossing paths with the aging warrior Cohen the Barbarian and a young woman named Bethan, while an ambitious wizard named Trymon schemes to gather the spells for himself as the deadline approaches.
Where it sits
- Universe: Discworld
- Series: Rincewind / Wizards core; position 2 of 8 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Terry Pratchett
Notes
- From the series record (Rincewind / Wizards): Sub-series grouping per Wikipedia arc articles; schemes vary between sources.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Rincewind / Wizards: position 2 of 8: previous The Colour of Magic (1983) · next Sourcery (1988)
Sources
- https://wiki.lspace.org/Bibliography
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_Fantastic
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Colour_of_Magic
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