From Discworld & Pratchett Wiki
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.
[edit] Characters
[edit] Main characters
[edit] Minor characters
[edit] Cameos
[edit] 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)
[edit] Locations
[edit] Timeframe
[edit] 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
[edit] 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, the daughter of the Mended Drum's owner 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 with faded, hazy, confused, dream-like memories of what might have happened. This is where fairy-tales begin...
