The Colour of Magic

Discworld, Book 1

By: Terry Pratchett

Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy

Brought to you by Penguin.

Over 1 million Discworld audiobooks sold – discover the extraordinary universe of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld like never before

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.

'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

© Terry Pratchett 1983 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critic reviews

One of the best and funniest English authors alive

Like Jonathan Swift, Pratchett uses his other world to hold up a distorting mirror to our own, and like Swift he is a satirist of enormous talent...incredibly funny...compulsively readable.

He would be amusing in any form and his spectacular inventiveness makes the Discworld series one of the perennial joys of modern fiction.

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!

God story - slow reading

The book remains a classic, but the narration was so slow I constantly found my thoughts drifting.
Luckily it was readily remedied by speeding up the playback to 1.2!

An update on a classic for sure.

so the original audiobook recording of this was done by sir Terry Pratchett himself, as this was before he was a well-known author obviously. The audio was scratchy and inconsistent, and made you miss certain details of the story. This update is amazing and brings new life. I hope the voice actor for death isn't the same throughout all these recordings. While he does a great job, death is supposed to sound sarcastic, and in this recording he sounds far, far to serious. Other then that, especially in this first entry, arguably the audiobook that needed to be remade the absolute most out of all of them, this is a delight. Nigel Planter is hard to beat, but I will deff give the rest of the books a chance with this level of production and care put into their release.

love the book hate the narrators

not a really clear accent, specially if a non native speaker listens. it just isn't accessible. also death just sounds flat and has lost his sparkle. the book itself is great ... obviously. this may not be the best of his work but even on a bad day he is phenomenal

Love the narration

Someone left a review about not being able to understand the narrators accent. I totally disagree. I think it’s one of the best narrations I’ve ever heard actually.