Low Fantasy

Review: Sourcery

Jay
Cover of the book, featuring a drawing of a magic lamp with smoke coming out of it and an orange magic carpet on a green background.

Title: Sourcery

Series: Discworld #5

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Low Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, body horror (mild), existential angst, alcohol use, fire

Spoiler Warning: This review may contain mild spoilers of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, but not of any other Discworld books.

Back Cover:

When last seen, the singularly inept wizard Rincewind had fallen off the edge of the world. Now magically, he’s turned up again, and this time he’s brought the Luggage.

But that’s not all….

Once upon a time, there was an eighth son of an eighth son who was, of course, a wizard. As if that wasn’t complicated enough, said wizard then had seven sons. And then he had an eighth son — a wizard squared (that’s all the math, really). Who of course, was a source of magic — a sourcerer.

Review:

Rincewind is back in this one, and at first I was annoyed about that because I wasn’t a huge fan of him in the earlier books. But in this one he’s starting to come into his own as a character. I don’t know if it’s because there was no Twoflower around to amplify his obnoxiousness or because this book gives him room to expand out of being a caricature and into a nuanced character, but I’m actually starting to like him. His cowardice was more humorous than annoying (especially since he’s starting to do things despite it), and his ability to survive things was framed more as a skill or maybe a magical ability than a direct result of his cowardice.

The cast of secondary characters is great too. There’s a guy who is entirely unsuited for being a barbarian warrior but gosh darn it he’s trying his best, a barbarian warrior’s daughter who really wants to be a hairdresser but can’t seem to overcome her barbarian warrior genetics, a terrifyingly powerful ten-year-old and his staff that may or may not be controlling him, some wizards at the Unseen University, a ruler who has no idea how the real world works but thinks things like poverty sound fun, and more. None of them have quite as much depth as Rincewind got in this book, but they’re all unique, interesting and/or entertaining, and fun to read about.

I took the back cover copy for this review from The StoryGraph, and I hope the actual back cover is better because that one is kinda … not fantastic. It tells you who’s in the book, but nothing about the story. The story is about a sourcerer, who is unfathomably powerful and doesn’t understand why wizards aren’t ruling the world, marching into Unseen University and deciding to make them rule the world. It’s about Rincewind, whose cowardly instincts realize this is a bad thing, and ends up on another adventure to save the world against his will. And it’s about conflicts between the wizards at the University, torn between following the sourcerer and seizing power and preferring the quiet, academic status quo. And though this book still is a save-the-world plot, it starts to get into deeper ideas (such as the ethics of forcing people into something “better” when they’re perfectly happy with what they have).

The tone of this one was a little jarring. The content is much darker than previous Discworld books (lots of people die and several people get horribly murdered), and yet the tone is extremely lighthearted, describing a violent magical death and then la-di-da-ing off to another absurd situation or amusing witticism. And it manages to do this so effectively that the deaths didn’t feel real and the horror of just how many people died in tortured painful ways didn’t sink in until long after I finished reading.

This book also made me laugh out loud at least twice. It was quite the dramatic combination of horrible deaths and hilarious quips.

I hope that Sourcery marks the point where the Discworld series finds its footing and becomes the epic and well-loved fantasy series it is. I had some struggles with the first few books (excepting Equal Rites because that was the first one I read and I had none of the context I did with the other early books I’ve read), but in this one I’m starting to see the beginnings of everything I love about the later books. I’m quite excited about continuing this series.

The Discworld series:

  1. The Colour of Magic
  2. The Light Fantastic
  3. Equal Rites
  4. Mort
  5. Sourcery
  6. Wyrd Sisters
  7. Pyramids
  8. Guards! Guards!
  9. Eric
  10. Moving Pictures
  11. Reaper Man
  12. Witches Abroad
  13. Small Gods
  14. Lords and Ladies
  15. Men at Arms
  16. Soul Music
  17. Interesting Times
  18. Maskerade
  19. Feet of Clay
  20. Hogfather
  21. Jingo
  22. The Last Continent
  23. Carpe Jugulum
  24. The Fifth Elephant
  25. The Truth
  26. Thief of Time
  27. The Last Hero
  28. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
  29. Night Watch
  30. The Wee Free Men
  31. Monstrous Regiment
  32. A Hat Full of Sky
  33. Going Postal
  34. Thud!
  35. Wintersmith
  36. Making Money
  37. Unseen Academicals
  38. I Shall Wear Midnight
  39. Snuff
  40. Raising Steam
  41. The Shepherd’s Crown