Returning to Pratchett always seems like returning to a very comfortable armchair. I am quite comfortable with what I expect from Pratchett and the Discword (the world hurtling through space on the back of a giant turtle). I’m comfortable with it’s slightly slapstick qualities, the humour and the twists and turns and unexpected heroics. It is getting to the point where Pratchett is a necessary staple for travelling, it’s a necessary break between heavy books or anything that takes itself a little too seriously. Sourcery, is a great read and one of the more enjoyable Discword novels I’ve read so far. This one follows Rincewind and tells of the dangers of what happens when a wizard is squared.
Yes, that was my terrible attempt at a math joke. If you are familiar with the novels you should also be familiar with the rule that the eighth son of an eighth son becomes a wizard. But this novel explores what happens when a wizard has an eighth son, who as it is a wizard squared, must be a Sourcerer.
Sourcery is a terrible thing in the Discworld. It is pure creation and power and unlike wizards who spend their lives committing books to memory, a Sourcerer will create without effort (and perhaps without knowing how).
Rincewind, the hero from the Colour of Magic, and the Light Fantastic, is the first to realise something is amiss in the magical world when he places his head against the wall of the Unseen University and hears it screaming. The Sourcerer (a young boy who is being bullied by his dead father’s spirit who occupies the staff he inherited from the living father), arrives at the University and divides the staff almost immediately.
The Orangutang Librarian, sneaks away into the library and locks himself in with panic stricken books. While some of the staff begin to form a mutiny against the Sorcerer-come-tyrianical-overlord, which of course will result in perhaps the worse fate for the disc, another magical war.
Rincewind (our very unlikely hero/coward) and the Luggage, the wonderful many legged box who possess a tendency to eat people it doesn’t like once again find themselves on an adventure to save the world. And this time, poor Rincewind is armed only with a brick in a sock.
This is certainly not my favourite Pratchett, but it is an enjoyable ride with some silly humour. Some find it the weaker out of Rincewind’s three novels so far, but actually I found it had gained a little more depth and traction because of the novels it follows. The wizards of the Discword aren’t my favourite, but they are fun and a little silly and have their own quirks that can only be Pratchett through and through.
The narrative of this one is simplistic and at the end seems to get a little tangled to the point that it can only really end one way. I always seem to enjoy Pratchett throwing very unlikely wannabe heroes at me and in this one there is a barbarian second or third day on the job wearing long underwear beneath his loin cloth and carrying a guidebook.
Sourcery takes similar themes to Equal Rites, and the idea of self restraint, and the resolution implies that sometimes over indulgence in a thing is short sighted. But it doesn’t quite have the charm of the Witches. The Luggage of course has it’s own story arc and seems to have a bit of an existential crisis ultimately finding itself quite bewildered at one point and knowing that it needs to find it’s owner.
This is a good staple Pratchett read and it builds on existing tropes that ultimately become the wider Discword Universe. I would say though that it is a novel that doesn’t shine as brightly as some of the others for me personally, but is still worth reading.
The Shelf Wanderer 