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Book:Sourcery
Sourcery
Co-author(s) {{{coauthors}}}
Illustrator(s) {{{illustrator}}}
Publisher Victor Gollancz
Publication date May 1988
ISBN 0552131075
Pages 269
RRP
Main characters Rincewind
The Luggage
Nijel the Destroyer
Coin
Conina
Series Rincewind Series
Annotations View
Notes Book #05
All data relates to the first UK 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

Minor characters

Cameos

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

Timeframe

Things Mentioned

Adaptations

Terry Pratchett has stated that Sourcery will be the fifth Discworld novel to be adapted for Sky One, although he initially wanted to adapt Making Money. However, he thinks it may work better as a film and he can have fun with characters like Nijel the Destroyer

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...

External links


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