Sourcery: A Discworld Novel

click here for more details, find new or used items	Terry Pratchett Our price £5.07 (£7.99) New from £2.52 Used from £0.30 Pages: 269 (Paperback) ISBN: 0552131075 Pub: Corgi Books Pub date: 1989-07-01 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 7378

Reader Reviews:

Exploding Wizardry (0/0 people found this helpful)

This is up to Mr Pratchett's usual great standards, a maniacal explosion of power followed by a little person with a fixation fixinf it.

A wizard squared (0/0 people found this helpful)

The eighth son of an eighth son is a wizard but the eighth son of a wizard is a wizard squared a source of power, a Sourcerer. When a young Sourcerer turns up at the Unseen University it falls to Rincewind, the Discs worst wizard, to save the world along with the Luggage and the daughter of the Discs greatest hero.

While I do think it is worth a low four out of five, `Sourcery' has never been one of my favourite Discworld books and it is probably one of the weakest of the Wizards series. I don't know what it is I dislike about the book as the characters are interesting and while the plot is a little light it is nonetheless as funny as any of the early Discworld books. As well as this the final confrontation with the Sourcerer is also very good.

One of the things I dislike about the book is that the Luggage, while still having some great scenes, does seem to be underused as if Terry couldn't think of what to do with it in some places. Other than this and the usual slight difference in style of the early books to the superior books later in the series, I cannot quite put my figure on why I dislike the book.

Despite my dislike of `Sourcery' I would still give it four stars as it is nonetheless entertaining and worth reading by any Discworld fan.

It's Terry Pratchett, What More Can I say? (0/0 people found this helpful)

bought a small pile of Terry Pratchett books as a gift and she is now very happily reading her way through them. Scored me some good lurv points!

A wizard squared = trouble (0/0 people found this helpful)

While not my favourite of the Discworld series Sourcery was still thoroughly enjoyable. There's reasons why wizards aren't allowed to fall in love. A wizard squared (the 8th son of an 8th son of an 8th son) is a sourcerer. Sourcerers are more powerful than normal wizards and when one sets out to become Arch-chancellor of the Unseen University and have wizards rule the Discworld, it's down to Rincewind, Nijel the Destroyer and Conina the Hairdresser, daughter of Cohen the Barbarian to thwart those plans.

The usual comedy of a Discworld tale is present throughout the book and Death's wit can only be rivaled by drunk Pestulance, War and Famine.

Pratchett's writing skills continue to improve (1/1 people found this helpful)

There was an eighth son of an eighth son who was, naturally, a wizard. But, for reasons too complicated to get into now, he also had seven sons. And then another one: a source of magic, a sourcerer. The Discworld hasn't seen a sourcerer for thousands of years, since the Mage Wars almost destroyed the world and caused an awful racket which annoyed the gods. Soon enough the re-energised wizards of the Disc are engaged in all-out warfare and the Apocralypse draws nigh (provided the Four Horsemen can get out of the pub in time). It falls to a wizard who doesn't know any spells, a box with lots of little legs, a mighty barbarian warrior of three days' experience, a timeshare genie and a homicidal hairdresser to save the day.

Sourcery sees the return of Rincewind and the Luggage as the Disc faces its greatest threat so far. Whilst previous books seemed to have end-of-the-world plots tacked on, this one embraces the concept to the fullest and is probably as 'epic' as the series ever gets. Fortunately, Pratchett seemed to get the end-of-the-world-is-nigh story out of his system with this book and whilst dire consequences would still abound in later books, things would never quite get as huge as this again.

Still, Pratchett has fun with the concept. Deep in the heart of every fantasy author is the burning desire to unleash a story with magical duels, vast magical towers exploding, evil grand viziers twirling their moustaches and unreconstructed, mighty-thewed barbarian warriors smiting legions of disposable extras with a broadsword so huge that it had to be forged from a gantry. There's some nice typically Pratchett twists on the concept though, and the humour is well-constructed throughout, particularly involving the Librarian who gets one of his biggest starring roles in the series. However, there are only a few new introductions to the Discworld mythos here, most notably Wuffles (an elderly dog).

As entertaining as it is, Sourcery is also a little bit obvious as a story, and as with Equal Rites it does feel that this story should have had much more long-lasting ramifications for the history of the Disc, even moreso given the epic scale of the novel. These problems can be borne for the strong characters, entertaining humour and the unexpectedly sad ending (which remains effective even when you know what happens in later books, particularly Eric).

Sourcery (***½) is a strong comic novel which showcases Pratchett's growing confidence and ability. It is available in the UK and USA right now.

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