Low Fantasy

Review: Unseen Academicals

Jay
Cover of the book, featuring assorted hands - some human, two that look like monkey hands, and one skeleton hand - reaching up to grab a brown leather ball.

Title: Unseen Academicals

Series: Discworld #37 (Rincewind #8)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Low Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death of parent (mentions), death (brief), vomit (mentions), violence, bullying, genocide (mentions), body horror (mild), racial prejudice against fantasy races

Spoiler Warning: This book is 37th in a series, but contains only the most minor of spoilers of previous Rincewind books.

Back Cover:

Unseen Academicals focuses on the wizards at Ankh-Morpork’s Unseen University, who are renowned for many things – sagacity, magic, and their love of teatime – as they attempt to conquer athletics.

Review:

I don’t know why this is categorized as a Rincewind book because Rincewind shows up as a background character in about four scenes and has two lines in the whole book. So of course I have some Thoughts about it. (Skip ahead to avoid my Rincewind rant.)

I really struggled with Rincewind at the beginning, because for the first two books he seemed more like an amusingly cowardly vehicle to explore the Discworld than an actual character to appreciate and enjoy. And then in later books, he got better. He was still cowardly, but less ruled by it, and got even funnier as he became somewhat aware of how his stories go. He was stellar in Interesting Times, and even started to grow as a character without becoming someone entirely different. I gather that this is an unpopular opinion, but I like him a lot.

Then after Interesting Times, his potential to grow into someone truly dynamic just got squandered. The Last Continent just wasn’t a fantastic setting or plot for him, and I’ll acknowledge that may be a personal opinion. In The Last Hero, he was there, but as a secondary character. In Unseen Academicals, he’s barely a background character. He seems to have gotten what he wanted – a professorship at Unseen University and nobody asking him to save the world – which I guess is good for him, but selfishly, I think he could have been great and I want to read more about him.

Rincewind aside: Once I got past the disappointment that this book is not actually about Rincewind, I could enjoy it more. The main plot was about football (the European kind), football fans, team loyalties, and such, and I wasn’t very enthusiastic about that. Part of it was because I am not and have never been a sports enjoyer, and part of it because I think this book was supposed to satirize British football fan culture, and since I’m not British and can’t confidently name a single British football team, that whole angle was lost on me.

However, there were other parts I liked a lot. Glenda was a fantastic character – responsible, practical, fat, doing a lot of things for a lot of people, sticking to safety in the familiar. I loved her dynamic with Juliet, her pretty airhead friend whom she desperately wanted to protect from both the world and herself. I also very much enjoyed Nutt, who I also found relatable in his being nice but a little odd and doing his best to learn how actual people interact. They were both a lot of fun.

Actually, except for Rincewind not being in it and not getting the sports fan culture satire, this whole book was a lot of fun. I liked getting to see some of the ordinary people in Ankh-Morpok and behind-the-scenes folk of Unseen University. Glenda and Nutt were both entertaining and relatable in their own ways, and even though I’m not a sports person, I enjoyed watching the wizards attempt to play sports. Ponder Stibbons is even becoming an entertaining character in his own right.

There was a little bit when I started reading that I felt like I had missed something important. That feeling did not stick around for very long, but I think I may go back to reading this series in publication order for the time being. Skipping around in the early series didn’t seem to be such a big deal, but these later books seem much more interconnected and I feel like I’m supposed to read them in publication order.

Even though Unseen Academicals makes a terrible conclusion to the Rincewind sub-series – mainly because it has hardly any Rincewind in it – it does make an entertaining stand-alone entry in the Discworld 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