captaind's Full Review: Terry Pratchett - Sourcery
Discworld for Beginners…
Discworld is a place of magic, mystery, madness, and occasionally murder. This manages to incorporate all of these elements into the story, more or less in the above order. It’s a place where mythical creatures such as unicorns really exist, Trolls are members of the City Watch, Zombies can earn a living, and luggage made of magical wood (sapient pearwood) have legs and a personality of their own. Discworld has become just as detailed and complex in its own way as Tolkein’s Middle Earth, Feist’s Riftworld, or anything else Fantasy writers have even produced. And it’s as funny as Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Red Dwarf – you really don’t need to be a fantasy fan to enjoy and appreciate Pratchett. In fact, his books are what really got me reading fantasy in the first place (I was a complete sci-fi fan who saw fantasy novels as a corruption of the art of writing, long ago in the deep recesses of my mispelt yout…)
Background
In the times long ago, there was more raw magic on the Disc. And there were Sourcerers (yeah I know, but that’s how Pratchett spells it, so that’s how I’m spelling it…), who battled each other with the magic, nearly ripping the fabric of the whole planet apart. (This was called “The Mage Wars”). This was narrowly avoided, and the Sourcerers gradually died out.
The number 8 is a magical number on Discworld. The eighth son becomes a Wizard. Wizards study magic so as to limit its use to an absolute minimum, because of the problems cause by The Mage Wars. Wizards also keep their libido hidden under several layers of robes, determination, and dust. Unknown to most of them (who just assume that women are evil / can’t be trusted / are unattainable to them – all of which are true to some extent), the real reason for this is that the eighth son of a Wizard is a Sourcerer. A new Sourcerer would mean vast amounts of raw magic flowing back into the world, and new “Mage Wars” – but this time, the Disc may not be able to stand the effects…
All was quiet for millennia. But then one Wizard broke the rules, married and had eight sons… and that eight son became the first Sourcerer the Disc had seen for a long time…
And it’s up to the Wizards of Unseen University to stop them… well, actually the task more or less ends up in the lap of Rincewind (the incredibly useless Wizard who starred in The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, and The Last Continent), Nijel, a wannabe Barbarian (offspring of the aged Cohen (The Light Fantastic), whose handicaps to this goal include asthma, myopia, muscles the size of a small pimple, and a frantic need to look up Cohen’s DIY “How to be a Barbarian” book), and Corinna, a sexy female Assassin who in fact wanted to be a hairdresser – and who manages to release Rincewind’s libido from the deep, dank prison it had been living in...
Oh, and the Arch-chancellor’s hat has quite a lot to say for itself, too…
Sourcery
Sourcery is one of Pratchett’s best – which means it’s one of the best humour books you could possibly get. Although I don’t view Rincewind as one of the better characters here (and I’m not quite as keen on The Luggage as some seem to be), they work well in this book, and the other characters are pretty good too – I liked Nijel and Corinna, and particularly a Seraph who appears and tries to be a poet but just can’t get the hang of it – and insists on calling Corinna “O Gazelle of the heavens” and similar wonderful poetic names… The Librarian (accidentally turned into an ape, refuses to be turned back into a human, and having an ape for a librarian is just one of those things that ends up seeming perfectly normal…) is also back, which is great, and Death appears along with his three horsemen of the apocalypse buddies. One of the funniest parts of the book is where they get drunk and forget about the end of the world… It’s highly satirical, highly imaginative, highly bizarre, and highly likely to send you into paroxysms of laughter.
Sourcery is the fifth of the Discworld series and the third to feature Rincewind and The Luggage. (As far as I know, there are four in total – The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, The Last Continent – links at the bottom of this review). This and The Last Continent are the best two Rincewind novels (though Light Fantastic is also good, it’s not in the same class), but I couldn’t really choose between them, they’re both outstanding books. This is probably one of the books that being familiar with the series is helpful, although I still think you’ll enjoy it even if you’ve never read a Discworld novel in your life.
I’ve noticed that the cover illustrations shown on epinions for the books (presumably the American mass-market paperback versions?) are totally different to the ones published in the UK (by Corgi – does someone else have the US rights?). From what I can see, you guys over the Atlantic are missing out some incredible covers by Josh Kirby, who has done all the covers I’ve seen. The manic style fits perfectly with the Discworld style, perhaps even more surreal (imagine DiVinci on acid while staring through curved glass at an orgy… or something) – it’s only a tiny point, but I feel he’s as good an artist as Pratchett is an author and so deserves a mention at the very least. (I won’t attempt to actually describe the illustration though, as it would be impossible to convey the insane images in words…)
Well, there you have it. A modern masterpiece, my only grumble is that it ends at all!
When last seen, the singularly inept wizard Rincewind had fallen off the edge of the world. Now, magically, he s turned up again, and this time he s b...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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