Sourcery – Part Five of The Discworld Experiment (reading each of the books in cronological order of release until I come across one that I really don’t like).

About halfway through Sourcery it looked like this might be the book that brought an early end to the experiment. At the beginning, it was quite promising: the eighth son of an eighth son becomes a Sourcerer, able to command the primeval magic of the Disc and likely bring about the end of existence at the same time. The only people who seem to be able to stop him are: Rincewind, the worst wizard on the Disc; the Unseen University’s Librarian (an orangoutang); Conina, a barbarian princess who would rather be a hairdresser; and the sentient Luggage. An excellent start, exactly the kind of thing that I had come to expect from the series, plus it marks the return of Rincewind, easily my favourite of the many characters Pratchett’s populated the Disc with. I found myself snickering and laughing once every two or three pages, which caused a few heads to turn, but I didn’t care: I was really enjoying it.

And then in the middle…it all starts coming apart. The Luggage goes off and has its own adventures, Rincewind and Conina travel to the desert and have their own adventures, and the Librarian stays at home and defends his books from the Sourcerer. Pratchett stumbles a little as he juggles these plot threads, and while it wass still humorous, I started wondering why I was still reading it, and where it was all going.

The last third of the book makes up for it, though, as our “heroes” head back to stop the Sourcerer and halt the Apocalypse (stealing three out of four horses stabled outside a local tavern, with rather silly results). The grand finale is fun, exciting, and surprisingly touching, and when it was all over I was very satisfied with the way things turned out. Sourcery is yet another good book in the fantasy series that pokes fun at fantasy series, and succeeds at examining the world the reader thought he already knew as well as exploring a few new places within it. Looks like I’m on to number six.

I heart Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series. Anything that includes Rincewind and the Librarian is ok by me.

Definitely one of the better wizardry-centric books.

Good reading. Not my favourite of the Discworld novels I’ve read, but still enjoyable.