Interesting Times

Inhoud

The Seventeenth Discworld Novel.
Mighty battles! Revolution! Death! War! (And his sons Terror and Panic, and daughter Clancy.
The oldest and most inscrutable empire on the Discworld is in turmoil, brought about by the revolutionary treatise What I did on My Holidays. Workers are uniting, with nothing to lose but their water buffaloes. War (and Clancy) are spreading throughout the ancient cities.
And all that stands in the way of terrible doom for everyone is:
Rincewind the Wizard, who can't even spell the word 'wizard'...
Cohen the Bararian hero, five foot tall in his surgical sandals, who has had a lifetime's experience of not dying...
...and a very special butterfly.

Bespreking

Finally Rincewind returns

Let's make one thing clear: the Agatean Empire did 'not' send Lord Vetinari, ruler of the Ankh-Morpork, a message by means of a Pointless Albatross. The message did not read "Send Us Instanly The Great Wizzard". Nevertheless, the guys from Unseen University -the fact that they all wear frocks clearly is more than a fashion statement- decide to send their most promising pupil Rincewind to the Counterweight Continent, 6000 miles away. Only one problem: Rincewind is currently floating peacefully in a lagoon and about to serve as lunch for a curious -but quite unlucky- shark. The shark is about to experience what it is to get in touch with heavy Luggage.

The Great Wizzard is back! For me this character is always a surplus to a novel by Terry Pratchett. Like all the Rincewind books, this one also classifies as some sort of road movie: Rincewind constantly being on the run for some kind of apocalyptic evil and more than once being hit with something that has no close resemblance to anything soft. Written by any other author this kind of storyline should quickly bore the hell out of the reader, but that is not taking into account the talents of Mr. Pratchett. The way he paints the characters of Cohen the Barbarian and his horde of senile warriors is certainly unprecedented. Although Interesting Times is not the funniest episode in the Discworld saga -the frequency of the jokes a bit too low to be able to claim this title- it is still an entertaining and absolutely recommended read.

The cliffhanger at the end of the book clearly indicates that we have not seen the last of Rincewind.