giovedì 12 giugno 2014

The last continent - Discworld book n. 22 - this is not a book about Australia, apparently...

As Terry Pratchett himself writes, "Discworld is a world and a mirror of worlds. This is not a book about Australia. No, it's about somewhere entirely different which just happens to be, here and there, a bit ... australian."
:lol: In this book we have Rincewind who will have to save the day, although with all the trouble with time wizards have been doing, I'm not exactly sure if he's saving the world, a continent, the future or the past... anyway, being the professional coward that he is, he'll need a bit of help to do it. And with just the right amount of the local beer and suddenly he can do it all! Mind you, he would also eat Fair Go Dibbler's pies...
The rest of the wizards would like to cure the Librarian who definitely and literally isn't being himself lately, changing as he is from a sofa to a book to whatever.
Of course when the wizards are involved, is often the case that they'll make more trouble than else. It goes like this: the librarian is ill, they want to cure him, the only cure they find requires the Librarian's name, noone of them knows aforesaid name, the Librarian won't reveal it, maybe Rincewind knows it, they need to find Rincewind, ops Rincewind is in EcksEcksEcksEcks, nobody knows where that is, they plan to ask the Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, he's not found but outside of his bathroom's windows they see a tropical beach and they go there, which is thousands of years back in time, where a sort of insane God of Evolution is experimenting.
Then it gets a bit... I mean, as far as I understood it, they travelled by boat and sort of shipwrecked on an island, or better, the Last Continent, which was still being done, and since they wouldn't let this God do his job, he trapped them in the rocks, sort of, by drawing their shape on a rock. In the present, Rincewind is about to save Fourecks, willingly or not! Water is running out and it never rains, but with the help of the local wizards and some local beer he sorts things out, bringing back to now the wizards we know and ultimately making it rain.
Now, I admit I only got it the second time I read it. Actually it was only 20 pages after, but I had forgotten about it. The Librarian had picked up an oval piece of wood and had kept it, after waving it a bit and thus stopping the rain. Then when they were trapped, the thing was trapped with them, so it rained no more. Now that they're back, it's back too, and by chance Rincewind finds it and makes it raining again.
Another great, interesting book. Rincewind as the absolute protagonist, and lots of wizards all around. Not my favourite book, compared to all the amazing others Pratchett has written, still a good one. Not my favourite because even if I like Rincewind, he can get a bit boring sometimes, and also I don't like gods, they're often boring.
The Luggage of course makes a small apparition, also called Trunkie by the "ladies" that found it. Death is seen too, although Rincewind is never very happy to see him.

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