Sourcery
by Terry Pratchett

This, the fifth novel of Discworld (though I don't know if chronology has anything to do with it) finds Rincewind living with the Luggage in a sort of utility closet at the Unseen University Library, unofficially assisting the orangutan Librarian. So his job mainly consists of fetching bananas.

But then something awful happens. A wizard has broken the "Lore" and gotten romantically involved (indeed, married) with a woman, has fathered seven wizards and then, his eighth son (being the eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son) is a "wizard squared," or a sourcerer.

Sourcery is the primordial magic that was not meant for men, and its existence in these latter times threatens to tear the world apart. Particularly in the hands of a ten-year-old boy who is being ruthlessly controlled by the embittered spirit of his dead father, which controls him through the wizard staff father passed to son.

Anyway you learn a lot about why wizards are supposed to be celibate, and you also meet Conina, the beautiful daughter of Cohen the Barbarian, who wants to be a hairdresser but is predestined by genetics to be a high-kicking, swashbuckling heroine. Together Rincewind and Conina flee from U. U. with the Archchancellor's hat (don't ask!) in hopes of stopping the Sourcerer from using magic to take over the world.

They meet such interesting characters and creatures as slave drivers; a Seriph (like a caliph) who likes to drink wine, write bad poetry and listen to stories told by his concubines; a pimply, asthmatic, middle-class boy who was inspired to become a barbarian hero by a how-to book written by Cohen (he styles himself, ahem, Nijel the Destroyer, and his mother makes him wear long underwear along with the usual scanty leather costume); a genie in a lamp; Ice Giants; three very drunk Horsemen of the Apocralypse (that is also not a misspelling); a basilisk (which is described as having the legs of a mermaid, the teeth of a fowl, the wings of a snake, and the hair of a tortoise); a geas (you'll just have to find out about that one; or see Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones); lots of very ticked-off wizards; a magic carpet; and a great deal more character development of the Luggage than one has hitherto expected.

Robbie Fischer
Arizona USA

Recommended Age: 14+

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