Skip to main content

Bibliophile reviews The Last Continent: by Terry Pratchett

Year published: 1998
Genre: Fantasy

Because Euro Crime requested it, her is a review of a Discworld book I reread in December:

Disclaimer: I am a Pratchett fan and have read all the Discworld books, so this review is based on a comparison with the other books in the series, as well as my knowledge of literature in general. It may also be a bit biased.

The Story: The Librarian of Unseen University, the Discworld’s premier college of magic, is suffering from a virulent form of the flu that causes him to change shape every time he sneezes. In order to cure him, the other wizards need to know his real name, which is a bit difficult as he was changed into an orangutan years before and has worked very diligently at destroying every clue as to his real name to avoid being turned back into a human. The wizards think Rincewind may know the answer, but he is stuck on the continent of Foureks, which is possibly what our world’s Australia might be if transported onto the flat and magical world of the Disc. While trying to find a wizard who can find Rincewind, the wizards stumble on a wormhole that leads to a rather unusual tropical island. It is not until they are stuck on the island in the company of the university’s housekeeper, Mrs. Witlow, that they discover that they have gone back into the distant past. They stumble across a God who helps them get off the island in a highly unconventional and dangerous “boat”, and they set off to find Foureks. Meanwhile, Rincewind is on the run on said continent, first from general danger, then from a Creator who insists that he is the only person who can fix the problems of the country, and then from the Watch, who want to hang him for sheep-stealing. Will Rincewind save the day and bring rain? Will the wizards find Foureks? Read it and find out.

Technique and plot: Rincewind is the protagonist of one of four sub-series within the Discworld series. Of the four series, the Rincewind books are the most frivolous and parodic. As the other series have become darker and more serious and the humour deeper, the Rincewind books (along with some of the early standalone books) have become the comic relief of the series. This is not to say the other series are not funny, but the humour tends to be deeper and darker than in the Rincewind books.
The narrative is Pratchett’s usual chaotic mixture of plots (only two this time) that at some point you know are going to come together, you just don’t know when. The Rincewind plot is, for most of the story, a series of sketches, while the plot with the wizards is more coherent.


Rating: Of the Rincewind books this one and The Last Hero are probably my favourites, but in relation to the other books (and considering that Rincwwind is my least favourite regular character) in the series I can only give this one 3+ stars.

Comments

Aisha said…
i didnt read that one, but i did read 'the last hero'
wow i LOVED it. terry pratchett never fails to crack me up!
Bibliophile said…
The Last Hero is not only a good story in itself, but it is greatly enhanced by Paul Kidby's wonderful artwork.
Thank you for the review. I loved this book. Did the Luggage reappear? I can't remember now but I must read some more Pratchett one of these days...
Bibliophile said…
The Luggage appears - eventually. I don't think the Rincewind books would not be half as funny without the Luggage.

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

First book of 2020: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach (reading notes)

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I loathe movie tie-in book covers because I feel they are (often) trying to tell me how I should see the characters in the book. The edition of Deborah Moggach's These Foolish Things that I read takes it one step further and changes the title of the book into the title of the film version as well as having photos of the ensemble cast on the cover. Fortunately it has been a long while since I watched the movie, so I couldn't even remember who played whom in the film, and I think it's perfectly understandable to try to cash in on the movie's success by rebranding the book. Even with a few years between watching the film and reading the book, I could see that the story had been altered, e.g. by having the Marigold Hotel's owner/manager be single and having a romance, instead being of unhappily married to an (understandably, I thought) shrewish wife. It also conflates Sonny, the wheeler dealer behind the retireme