Title: Eric
Series: Discworld #9
Author: Terry Pratchett
Genre: Low Fantasy
Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, imprisonment (mentions), cosmic horror, sexual innuendos, sexism (mild)
Spoiler Warning: This book is ninth in a series, and though it does connect to the end of Sourcery and so may contain mild spoilers of that book, it has no spoilers of other Discworld books.
Back Cover:
Discworld’s only demonology hacker, Eric, is about to make life very difficult for the rest of Ankh-Morpork’s denizens. This would-be Faust is very bad…at his work, that is. All he wants is to fulfill three little wishes:to live forever, to be master of the universe, and to have a stylin’ hot babe.
But Eric isn’t even good at getting his own way. Instead of a powerful demon, he conjures, well, Rincewind, a wizard whose incompetence is matched only by Eric’s. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, that lovable travel accessory the Luggage has arrived, too. Accompanied by his new best friends, there’s only one thing Eric wishes now — that he’d never been born!
Review:
I didn’t intend to start reading the Discworld books out of order. I just had Eric and Guards! Guards! on my phone at the same time and forgot which one came first. But considering I was a little disoriented on where Rincewind when this book picked up, it’s for the best. There are six sub-series within the Discworld series:
- Rincewind
- Witches
- Death
- Ankh-Morpok City Watch
- Industrial Revolution
- Tiffany Aching
All but a couple Discworld books fit under one of those. Considering I read the Tiffany Aching books in order, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before to read by sub-series instead of by publication date so I could stick with one character until their story was done. So accidentally picking up Eric before Guards! Guards! was a good thing. So I’m going to continue with the Rincewind books for now.
All that said, Eric was incredibly short. Fourteen-year-old demonologist Eric attempts to summon a demon, and instead summons Rincewind, whose ineptitude is basically a skill in and of itself. He makes three wishes, and he and Rincewind get magicked around seeing the consequences of those wishes. There’s also an antagonist in a demon king who wanted Eric to summon a real demon and not an inept wizard, but the story is too short for him to really do anything.
This book being so short (3.5 hours in audiobook, around 150 pages in print) is both good and bad. Good because Eric is an entitled obnoxious brat and I didn’t want to spend any more time with him than I had to. Bad because Rincewind and his ineptitude and cowardice were fun as always and I really wanted more of the demon society and the demon king and his attempts to modernize hell. Those were honestly the most interesting bits and I wished there were more about them.
Aside from Eric himself, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It’s got Discworld mythology, interesting cultures, bouncing around through space and time, some fun stuff about demons and the Discworld’s version of hell (which I really hope is in future books), a brief and unexplored theme of ancestry and whether you should tell if you know the future, and Rincewind may not be a very deep character but he’s very entertaining. The next Rincewind book is Interesting Times, and I’m looking forward to it.
The Discworld series:
- The Colour of Magic
- The Light Fantastic
- Equal Rites
- Mort
- Sourcery
- Wyrd Sisters
- Pyramids
- Guards! Guards!
- Eric
- Moving Pictures
- Reaper Man
- Witches Abroad
- Small Gods
- Lords and Ladies
- Men at Arms
- Soul Music
- Interesting Times
- Maskerade
- Feet of Clay
- Hogfather
- Jingo
- The Last Continent
- Carpe Jugulum
- The Fifth Elephant
- The Truth
- Thief of Time
- The Last Hero
- The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
- Night Watch
- The Wee Free Men
- Monstrous Regiment
- A Hat Full of Sky
- Going Postal
- Thud!
- Wintersmith
- Making Money
- Unseen Academicals
- I Shall Wear Midnight
- Snuff
- Raising Steam
- The Shepherd’s Crown
Bluejay Reads 