This was the first one I read after I moved to Australia - in fact it was only a few weeks after I moved here - and I love it for that reason. He totally 100% nailed it exactly! Without being offensive, he parodied Australia, mostly in a totally unique way not done before.
If you don’t know Australia, half of it probably won’t make as much sense to you until you visit. So I recommend you do.
I loved, loved, loved the Priscilla: Queen of the Desert reference.
Otherwise… eh, it was pretty good. Not as good as Interesting Times (Rincewind Does Ancient China), which managed to pull some heartstrings really hard, but better than Pyramids (Rincewind Does Not Do Ancient Egypt). I wouldn’t mind reading it again.
Also, nothing can top “When it’s time to stop living, I will certainly make Death my number one choice!” but"Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon – he’d run them all."
I love it for the bickering among the faculty, which Pterry had perfected at that time. I Like Rincewind, but I can see why people are tired of the cowardly hero schtick. Maybe he’s not good for another book, but I wouldn’t mind seeing him in a cameo, the way Vimes has shown up in books not revolving around the Watch.
Rincewind gets a look-in in the Science of the Discworld and Last Hero books, Charlie Tan. I dunno, I really like Rinso and would love many more books with him in. I think here he’s perfected what he truly is - running without thinking, even better than in IT. Plus, despite the initial cluelessness, there are several moments when we see that he’s actually pretty sharp.
I liked LC - in amongst the Aussie jokes there were some nice reflections on evolution and differing worldviews. Plus, I really loved the pea-ship.
Also, refreshing to have one that didn’t have a Big Bad Villain to defeat. We don’t get too many of those.
It was a perfect gift for my Aussie brother in law last Christmas.
He’s now working his way through the rest of the series, borrowing the books three at a time.
This was the first Discworld book I ever read, so I has a special place in my heart because of that. I still probably rank it in the top 10 of the Discworld books, if only for the God of Evolution, the creation of the platypus, and Rincewind’s drunken creation of Vegemite.
Soul Music did have a big bad - the supernatural force that took over Buddy at the Cavern Club. And in Eric the big bad was the Demon Lord who overthrew the old Demon King.
No major villains in Mort or Equal Rites, though.
I wouldn’t classify the music force as “Bad” so much as “primal.” And didn’t the Demon Lord concentrate more on getting power rather than trying to eliminate Our Heroes?
That reminds me of what I think is one of the fundamental weaknesses of the book. The fact that it is really two separate stories that touch each other only briefly. In fact, the first time read it, my eye must have skipped over a line because I missed the connection.
I think that both stories would have been stronger if he had separated them completely. They would both have worked better as two different novelettes.
And I think the Rincewind story was the better of the two. The wizards on Mono Island story mostly padded out a novelette to novel length.
Another comment I just want to make is that it saddened me that the Rincewind mini-series ended on a low note. All of the other mini-series of the discworld progressively got better as they went along. In my opinion *Thief of Time * was better than Mort, Night Watch and Thud were better than *Guards Guards * and Men At Arms, you get the idea.
But the Rincewind series, while starting off a bit slow, had some pretty good books in it. However, *The Last Continent * was definitely not the best, and I just wish he had ended a bit better. I really hope Pratchett writes one more Rincewind book just to finish the mini-series off a bit better.
(Yes, I know Rincewind is in The Last Hero, but that is a book for a lot of characters, not just him)
