"The Color of Magic" by Terry Pratchett

Plot summary: The Discworld has a tourist, Twoflower. Lord Vetinari (or possibly his predecessor, Mad Lord Snapcase?) assigns Rincewind to deal with him (read: be a tour guide and keep him alive). Then they have various adventures, divided into four parts: The Color of Magic, The Sending of Eight, The Lure of the Wyrm, and Close to the Edge.

This is the first Discworld book, and it shows. Many of the characterizations are off (for example, Death is a lot more of a jerk than in later books, and Lord Vetinari [or Snapcase] is just weird), it's divided into different parts (none of the rest of them are), and the tone is just... slightly wrong.

I'm pretty sure this whole book is just Terry Pratchett poking fun at various things, including but not limited to: medieval fantasy, insurance, tourists, Lovecraftian horror, and... 

So I'm assuming that, at the time of this book's writing (1983ish), there was a wildly popular (possibly only in Britain) series of books about dragon riders. This I deduce from the section "The Lure of the Wyrm", which is specific enough in its jokes to be making fun of something, but I can't for the life of me tell what.

 

My favorite part of this book is Twoflower |defeating the Sender of Eight with... flash photography|.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for crude humor and swearing. They actually did make a videogame of this one--a text adventure, specifically--but it was before the ESRB was a thing, so it wasn't rated by them. (Interesting note, do you know what kicked off the events that led to the ESRB's creation? The release of the first Mortal Kombat game and subsequent outcry at its content.)

3 stars.

Appearances of Death count: 23.

(Endnote: The Sender of Eight is an eldritch being named Bel-Shamharoth. Which isn't super interesting unless you've read a couple of the other books and noticed the Discworld's analogue to the YMCA: the Young Men's Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth Association.)