Late Night Addiction (Eric - Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: The Solid Grey

Product:	Eric - Terry Pratchett
Date:	06/12/01 (180 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very entertaining and you can’t go wrong

Disadvantages: none, other than being a little shorter than usual

There are books you read because they’ve been recommended, ones that are well know classics, ones by your favourite author and ones that are about stuff your interested in, but if you want a really good light hearted read; then Terry Pratchett’s your man.

Its only been the last couple of years that I started to read Terry Pratchett, I’d heard plenty about him, the Discworld and such, but never actually read any of his books and like a lot of author’s/books that people have suggested I read, I never got round to it, until one day.........

I was going home in a taxi when I noticed a copy of ‘The Last Continent’ - the latest in paper back of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series - and so as we (me and the driver that is) got talking the conversation came round to the book and Terry Pratchett. As it happened the driver read books while he was waiting for jobs and he’d just finished reading this one, which was very good (he said), and as I was interested he said I could buy it for £2, and so I did.

I loved it!, it took me back to the times when I read books when I was younger, Enid Blyton’s ‘The Famous Five’, ‘The Secret Seven’, ‘The ****** Of Adventure’, the ‘Hardy Boy’s’ books, ‘Doctor Who’, and so on, I remember staying up all night, tears running down my face (out of tiredness, I’ll add, I’m no sissy), not being able to put the books down because they were so engrossing and I just had to know what was going to happen next.

Reading Terry Pratchett was just like those times, I haven’t read something so addictive for a long, long time (though I do go through periods of reading and not reading), I’ve read some good books but nothing quite like this. I went out to a local second hand bookshop and got a couple more, (as it happened they were the ones that came just before ‘The Last Contine
nt’), they were great too, and I then went back and started to read all of the Discworld books in order from the beginning, so this is an opinon of the latest one I’ve read.

The Discworld
Is a large disc that sits on the backs of four elephants, who, in turn, stand on the back of a great star turtle, Great A’Tuin, on the Discworld live a number of various races, dwarfs, trolls, werewolves, wizards, witches, and many other weird and wonderful people, in the Discworld almost anything goes.

The Books
Each book deals with a different set of characters, that is that, the sets of characters alternate between the books, but they can also appear in books that their characters aren’t in, got that?, no?, well some major characters feature as minor characters in books they aren’t in (got it now?, oh well you work it out). The sets are: Rincewind and The Luggage, The City Watch, The Witches and Death (or should that be DEATH (who also appears in all the boks)), there are also a few stand alone characters too.

Eric
Eric is the ninth book in the Discworld series, I’ve heard, or seen, that its a children’s book and was co-written with Josh Kirby (but wher I saw this I can't say or find). Its slimmer in volume to the rest of the Discworld books, and as with most of them, it has no chapters, and its similar to the first book in the series, as its not one single plot, but a few short stories, with an underlying plot.

The Plot
There was another reason why I couldn’t wait to read this book as it featured Rincewind and The Luggage, in the last one that featured them, they saved the world, and disappeared, thought to be dead, but as I had already read a ‘future’ one with him in I knew he was alive, but how was what I was dying to know.

Eric is a small boy and the Discworlds only demonology hacker, and accidentally calls up Rincewind, instead of a demon to
grant his wishes, meanwhile Astfgl the new king of the demons isn’t happy about this turn of events, and no ones taking to his new administration as well as he’d liked, and, when Rincewind clicks his fingers to demonstrate that he can’t just grant wishes, he and Eric find themselves suspended above the Disc, and each successive time he clicks his fingers they get taken to the next place for Eric’s wishes to be granted, Rincewind begins to think is he really a demon?.

Did I Like It?
You bet, each wish is a small story, and there’re all connected by the happenings in the book, which made it even more additive as once one part of it over, they arrive in a new situation, with a new set of troubles and you want to know what’s happening.

As with all the plots in Terry’s books the story of/in Eric was very engrossing, and of course its well written, and very funny, it took very little time to read (even though its considerable shorter than the norm), I loved it.

The only problem I have with it, is that I read it dying to know what happened to Rincewind at the end of his last book, and now its finished I’m dying to know what’s going to happen next.

So for a real good, light read, read Terry Pratchett.

And I haven’t even mentioned Douglas Adams onc.......Oh, damn it!

The Solid Grey

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