Discworld #5 - Sourcery
I'm reading all of the Discworld novels. Use the tags to find those posts.
I'm reading all of the Discworld novels in order.
I've realised - possibly for the second time in my life, given that I historically avoided Rincewind books - that I don't particularly like RinQcewind as a main character. He's very passive, with things happening to and around him rather than being driven by him, and that bothers me. Sourcery very much suffers from this problem. Rincewind does become a little more proactive towards the end, but by that point it's too little, too late.
I really wanted this book to be about Coin and the staff that contains his father's soul, which is what the opening section promises us. And it is about that, but because it's shown to us through the point of view of a character who spends most of his time running away and actively trying not to be a protagonist, we don't really get to see any of the interesting stuff. I get that that's sort of the point of Rincewind as a character - he's very much an anti-hero in a Pratchett sense, rather than the general meaning of that term - but it just doesn't work for me.
I think this is the first book in the series I'm going to say I actively disliked. It isn't bad, and it probably suffers from coming straight off the back of a top-tier novel like Mort, but it's definitely (for me, anyway) the weakest of these first few books even when we account for how rough and prototypical The Colour Of Magic and The Light Fantastic are.