Review: Eric

Eric by Terry Pratchett
eBook


My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Eric, first published 1990, is the ninth discworld book, and the first published as illustrated novel. Sadly, the Kindle version I was reading included neither the illustrations by Josh Kirby, nor the alternating page titles of Eric and Faust. It is also a Rincewind novel.

If you've read the older books revolving around the inept wizard, you already know that he has vanished to the dungeon dimensions in Sourcery. Now he gets a chance to come back - a one in a million chance, to be exact. They always work.
Eric is only a boy, but he is obsessed with summoning a demon to get three wishes: to live forever, to get the most beautiful woman of the world, and to be the ruler of the world. Instead of a demon, though, it's Rincewind who appears in the circle and has to play the role of a demon. He is quite surprised, in fact, that snapping his fingers has any effect at all...
Oh, and the effect it has! Rincewind and Eric are taken to an empire in Klatch, where the people are waiting to meet the ruler of the world - to complain. Only, complaining in an annoyed tone of voice is not their style, they're more the torture and kill types. They are rescued by the Luggage, of course, and with another finger snapping end up in a big wooden horse.
In Pyramids, the thing with the wooden horse was already extensively covered, but here's a short summary: Ephebe and Tsort are Terry Pratchett's parody on the Trojan war. In this war, though, the civilians try selling food to fighting soldiers and the Luggage gets to chase a lot of people. Before snapping his fingers again, Rincewind meets his ancestor Lavaeolus, who invented the horse and all tactics surrounding it. He can't bring himself to tell him that a long, 10 year journey lies before him...
Then Eric and Rincewind end up at the beginning of the universe, to have a nice chat with the creator (who creates an egg and cress sandwich for the wizard). To live forever means to start out at the beginning... But not with Rincewind! He makes Eric reverse his summoning of him, taking them both to hell.
How they escape from there as well, and what bureaucracy can do to hell, I'll leave up to you to find out.

So, what can I say about the book? It had Rincewind, the Luggage, a stupid teenager, Death, demons... Some references reminding me of Good Omens and a lot of travelling to strange places. I know some people really disliked Eric, but I enjoyed it as much as the other discworld novels I read so far.


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Review: Sourcery

Sourcery by Terry Pratchett
eBook

My rating: 4 of 5 stars






I must admit that I'm growing quite fond of Rincewind, the inept wizard. It's a pity he tends to disappear, or probably die, at the ends of his novels. I never know whether or not he will be back.

Anyway, Sourcery (first published 1988) is about the eighth son of an eighth son (wizard) of an eighth son: a sourcerer. They are very, very powerful, sourcerers (= sources of magic), and also very rare. There is a reason why wizards don't have much, or any, contact with women... And it can get worse when the sourcerer's father wants revenge for being banished from Unseen University for having fallen in love.
Rincewind, together with Conina (the daughter of Cohen the barbarian) and the Luggage sets out to save the Archchancellor's hat, symbol of wizardry, from the sourcerer, only to find that the hat has plans of its own, which could lead to the Apocralypse, the end of the world. In order to stop the oncoming mage war, Rincewind has to kill the sourcerer, a ten-year-old boy who is forced to help wizards rule the discworld.

As always, Rincewind goes about the business of being an involuntary hero using his rodent-like talent to escape death and arguing with his consciousness about what should be done in contrast to what would be sensible to do. To make matters worse, he (and the Luggage) both fall in love (symptoms: sweaty palms, hot sensation in stomach, skin of chest made of tight elastic, someone running hot steel into spine), which leads to the Luggage getting seriously drunk and lost.
In addition to Rincewind and the Luggage, the novel is populated with weird and funny characters. There's Conina, forced to be a heroine by genetics but wannabe hairdresser, Nijel the Destroyer, a wannabe hero, and Creosote, a rich wannabe poet. They all have their own to contribute to save the discworld from destruction when the Gods vanish and the Ice Giants return.

Sourcery was a lot of fun to read, finally making Rincewind one of my favourite Terry Pratchett characters. You shouldn't read it without having read the other Rincewind novels first, though.
Compared to the last discworld book I read, there was a lot less repetition this time, which made me all the more happy. I'm already looking forward to the next book (and regretting slightly that I'm going by publishing order, since I want to know how Rincewind gets back)!


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