I haven’t done one of thse in a while. Not since the one on Mort back in early March, but I’m feeling like doing one now. So here we go!
Sourcery
is the fifth book in the wildly popular Discworld series, and for anyone who wants to know why there isn’t a lot of magic in the books, read this one.
The plot centers around the eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son (guess what number is important in Discworld magic?), a boy named Coin, who gets his hands on a wizard’s staff. The staff gets its somewhat more metaphorical hands around Coin, and starts trying to bring about a world where magic rules above all else.
But before that, we have to get certain introductions out of the way, including the introduction of the world itself, and the Great Turtle upon which it rides.
There was no anology for the way in which Great A’Tuin, the world turtle, moved against the galactic night. When you are ten thousand miles long, your shell pocked with meteor craters and frosted with comet ice, there is aboslutely nothing you can realistically be like except yourself.
So Great A’Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar depths like the largest turtle there has ever been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants that bore on their backs the vast, glittering waterfall-fringed circle of the Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of probability or possibly because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone.
Now the eye’s camera pans down onto the Disc itself and there, sulking beside the Circle Sea, we see Ankh-Morpork, glittering gem of cities!
Spring had come to Ank-Morpork. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but there were signs that were obvious to the cognoscenti. For example, the scum on the River Ankh, that great wide slow waterway that served the double city as reservoir, sewer and frequent morgue, had turned a particularly iridescent green. The city’s drunken rooftops sprouted mattresses and bolsters as the winter bedding was put out to air in the weak sunshine, and in the depths of musty cellars the beams twisted and groaned when their dry sap responded to the ancient call of root and forest. Birds nestled among the gutters and eaves of Unseen University, although it was noticable that however great the pressure was on the nesting sites, they nevber, ever made nests in the invitingly open mouths of the gargoyles that lined the rooftops, much to the gargoyles disapointment.
Of course Ankh-Morpork is home to the great Unseen University (motto: Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides). The University is where the biggest library in the world is located, and overseen by the Librarian (currently a large orangutang, due to a weird magical accident). The Library has a few books that are beyond what’s typical.
Books of magic have a life of their own. Some have altogether too much; for example, the first edition of the Necrotelecomnicon has to kept between iron plates, the True Arte of Levitatione has spent the last one hundred and fifty years up in the rafters and Ge Fordge’s Compenydyum of Sex Majick is kept in a vat of ice in a room by itself, and there’s a strict rule that it can only be read by wizards who are over eighty and, if possible, dead.
In most old libraries the books are chained to the shelves to prevent their being damaged by people. In the Library of the Unseen University, of course, it’s more or less the other way about.
And now we come the “hero” of the story, one Rincewind, a wizard, of a sort, about whom a teacher once said…
… to call his understanding of magic abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practics.
Lasty we get to meet, properly for the first time, Lord Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician and ruler of Ankh-Morpork.
The current Patrician, head of hte extremely rich and powerful Vetinari family, was thin, tall and apparently as cold-blooded as a dead penguin. Just by looking at him you could tell he was the sort of man you’d expect to keep a white cat, and caress it idly while sentencing people to death in a pirahna tank; and you’d hzard for good measure that he probably collected race thin procelain, turning it over and over in his blue-white fingers while disant screams echoed from the depths of the dungeons. You wouldn’t put it past him to use the word “exquisite” and have thin lips. He was the kind of person who, when they blink, you mark it off on the calendar.
Pratically none of this was in fact the case, although he did have a small and exceedingly elderly wire-haired terrier called Wuffles that smelled badly and wheezed at people. It was said to be the only thing in the entire world he truly cared about. He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behavior for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overwhelming majority of citizens. The people of Ankh are of a practical persausion, and felt the Patrician’s edict forbidding all street theatre and mime artists made up for a lot of things. He didn’t administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower.
Coin, the young boy-wizard/sourcerer (someone who has direct access to the source of magic), turns up at the University. He quickly takes over by using the staff, and soon the wizards are all squaring off against one another, building huge towers and firing off blasts of magic that scar the land. This happens because the wizards tend to be very… well, I’ll let the book explain it.
The higher levels of wizardry are a perilous place. Every wizard is trying to dislodge the wizards above him while stamping on the fingers of those below; to say wizards are healthily competitive by nature is like saying piranhas are naturally a little peckish.
One of his other books makes the observation that, once upon a time, the plural of “wizard” was “war”, which this book showcases nicely.
Well, eventually Rincewind, with the help of a woman named Conina and a would-be barbarian hero named Nijel, wind up saving the day, more or less. They get to visit the Discworld version of Arabia (Klatch), and are present for the Aprocralypse (like an apocalypse, but, as it turned out, not).
This is a decent book, though nothing great by Discworld standards. There isn’t as much good commentary and satire as one would get later. It’s still a good and fun read, but not anything especially great.
On the other hand, the next book in the series, Wyrd Sisters
, is one of the best of the entire Discworld series!
