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Sourcery
Cover	[[Image:|thumb|center|200px|{{{1}}}]]
Published	May 1988
Publisher	Victor Gollancz
ISBN	0552131075
Pages	269
Series	Rincewind Series
Main characters	Rincewind The Luggage Coin Conina
Annotations	Annotations for Sourcery
Notes	Book #05
All data relates to the UK hardback edition.

Blurb

There was an eighth son of an eighth son. He was, quite naturally, a wizard. And there it should have ended. However (for reasons we'd better not go into), he had seven sons. And then he had an eighth son ... a wizard squared ... a source of magic ... a Sourcerer.

Characters

Main characters

• Coin
• Conina
• Rincewind
• The Luggage
• Spelter
• Marmaric Carding
• Nijel the Destroyer

Minor characters

• Librarian
• Ipslore the Red
• Virrid Wayzygoose
• Havelock Vetinari
• Creosote, the Seriph of Al Khali
• Abrim, the Grand Vizier of Al Khali

Cameos

• Death and the temporarily Horse-less men of the Apocralypse:
  • War
  • Famine
  • Pestilence
• Skarmer Billias
• Gravie Derment, of the Sages of the Unknown Shadow
• Ice Giants
• Larry the Fox or perhaps Fezzy the Stoat
• Ovin Hakardly, a 7th level wizard who can speak punctuation
• Wuffles
• Ardrothy Longstaff, seller of pork pies
• Miskin Koble, who runs a jellied starfish and clam stall, and is killed by a wizard he attempts to hit
• Benado Sconner, leader of a group of wizards who burn down the library. The text specifically informs us that his name is "not worth committing [...] to memory"
• Genie of the lamp of Creosote's grandfather, who is somewhat over-committed
• Blind Io

Mentioned

• Maligree, a sourcerer
• Gritoller Mimpsey, vice-president of the Thieves' Guild
• Cohen, Conina's father
• Hashishim, a group of mad killers named after the vast quantities of hashish they consumed
• Thugs, a nastier group of cut-throats, not named after a religious sect
• Ly Tin Wheedle, arguably the Disc's greatest philosopher (at least, he always argued that he was)

Locations

• Ankh-Morpork
  • Unseen University
    • Great Hall
    • Tower of Art
    • Library
  • The Shades
    • The Troll's Head, a truly disreputable tavern
  • The Mended Drum
  • Sniggs Alley (mentioned)
  • Sator Square
  • Plaza of Broken Moons

• Klatch
  • Al Khali
    • The Soak, a kind of bazaar
    • Wilderness of Creosote
    • Rhoxie, the Seriph's Palace
    • River Tsort
    • temple of Offler the Crocodile God, patron deity of Al Khali
  • Lost City of Ee (mentioned)

• Mount Gebra, a mountain where goats graze

• Circle Sea

• Quirm, which overlooks the Rim Ocean

• Carrack Mountains, overlooking the Sto Plains

• Cori Celesti, where the gods dwell, at the Hub

Timeframe

• Small Gods' Eve, on which it's considered extremely bad form to kill a brother wizard and Small Gods' Day, the next morning
• Year of the Hyena
• Soul Cake Thursday (mentioned)

Things Mentioned

• Maligree's Wonderful Garden, a powerful spell
• Megrim's Accelerator, a powerful spell
• Brother Hushmaster's Potent Asp-Spray, a powerful spell
• Archchancellor's Hat, worn on the head by the head of all wizards
• Apocralypse and Teatime of the Gods
• Ocean Waltzer, a ship that takes Rincewind and Conina to Klatch
• orakh, a powerful alcoholic beverage
• Klatchian coffee, a powerful "anti-alcoholic" beverage that makes its drinkers knurd
• Inne Juste 7 Dayes I wille make you a Barbearian Hero!
• Triple Orcthrust with Extra Flip, a nifty sword maneuver that will impress your enemies right up until it leaves your sword stuck in the ceiling
• geas, an unusual kind of bird (also a kind of quest)
• Mage Wars
• the Lore, which rules all wizards, but not sourcerers
• Significant Quest, a game whose name parodies Trivial Pursuit
• Five Moons of Nasreem, an important mythological concept in Al Khali
• Seventeen Siderites of Sarudin, goddesses(?) by which genies can presumably be commanded
• Two Beards of Imtal, an important mythological concept in Al Khali
• Dungeon Dimensions
• racial memory, the concept that people are born with memories of their ancestors
• Wellcome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises, a book published by the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Merchants
• Anima Unnaturale, a book written by Broomfog that describes many unusual animals
• Fullomyth, a mystical book with a lot of information

Annotations

• Did Spelter and Carding violate the Small Gods' Eve truce by attacking each other with Megrim's Accelerator and Brother Hushmaster's Potent Asp-Spray? Or did they carefully wait until after midnight before doing so?

• Notice that near the end of the book, a the Mended Drum's owner's daughter tells Creosote the very story of Sourcery itself, a recursive reference. If, as some suspect, the History Monks were active in restoring things after the Sourcerer very nearly wrecked the fabric of Discworld space-time (a case may be made from cryptic references in later books) then it is fitting the only survival of the Sourcerer, in folk-memory, should be a fairy-tale. After all, people thought the story of the "Glass Clock of Bad Schuschein" was only a fairy tale - fitting, as the History Monks laboured long and hard that this should be so... we are told that most people, after the Sourcerer had passed, were left weith faded, hazy, confused, dream-like memories of what might have happened. This is where fairy-tales begin...