But he won’t be heard. He is contrived to listen again. Yet even after listening, he was also demanded to answer. And “no” is not in the choices, let alone silence.

He dealt with wizardry. He dealt with witchcraft. And now, Pratchett talks about sorcery. But he does more than dealing with it. He introduced grudge and rage and appended them to the highest form of human magic so that the story will advance to an epic scale.

So again, the plot started with a thunder setting, but more than introducing the eighth son (gender is not mistaken this time), we are presented with his eighth babe. Perhaps Pratchett was encouraging procreation by tempting that there is magic in your eighth offspring? Au contraire. Breed frequently, and you get the risk of sourcery. It won’t be dangerous as long as the said heir is guided accordingly. But you don’t expect anything good from a vengeful wizard. You get lax, and you realize how terribly infested your home is as a shake of the soil would make a swarm of rodents and colonies of ants bid goodbye to your home. Now that I think about it, isn’t sourcery an excellent pesticide?

Came sooner, Coin, ravaged the Lore and ended the Archchancellor election by exhibiting a glimpse of his “virtue” and simply sat on the highest cathedra without much of a struggle. Then we become versed that the prevailing wizards are the legitimate pests as they feed on the proffered power no human can contest. Fortunately, our Rincewind perceived the signs as ominous even before the source of magic came into view. But unfortunately, this was another chance for an adventure he ardently does not want. And unfortunately, indeed, it has to be a woman who owns a fascinating voice to compel him to assist the Archchancellor’s hat on a trip to Klatch for a reason of sorts.

Pratchett built a world in a disk. And he went on a full measure in the concept of domination through his book, Sourcery. The question was, “If wizards are powerful, why didn’t they rule the world?” I’ve read few books that dealt with this query and the writers replied fairly quick—they still made sense that imposed acknowledgment. What is Pratchett’s response? Or rather, how did Pratchett respond? Instead of reposting, he thought long and resolved the trope in all the pages of Sourcery.

It will lose the balance. The wizards will not be contented in the division of domain. Like empires, they will conquer adjacent lands and even remote enclaves. Tectonic plates will shiver as rocks ascend into towers by magical summoning to fight their own kind they once called brothers. Shove a magically overpowered human who even traps the gods in an attempt to be the sole divine; you invite frozen titans indignant to revert the state of the world to the glacial age. And if you think that’s the worst of it, you might have forgotten that we still have the Things in the Dungeon Dimensions so bored with their white sand and impatient to get their tentacles on rigid clay and polluted waters. And oh, you do not exclude The Horsemen in the exciting scene. They do not need to wait, they can just casually play around a bar in Sto Plains because four plights are already attached to their persons, and sooner or later, they will be invited for a role. In Pratchett’s concise manner of writing, the world will tremble. Such a high-class narrative demonstrating a seemingly omnipotent human is present and shaded with vindictiveness.

Throughout the read, everything came to place when Archchancellor’s Hat said, “The world is going to end. The triumph of the Ice Giants, the Apocralypse, the Teatime of the Gods, the whole thing.”

Pratchett seems to really hate the self-esteem of wizards, too imperious that he finally found a reason to destroy the Unseen University. Wizards ask for power, or rather, the opportunity to reclaim their stakes and Pratchett gave them sorcery. But it does not happen the same in Genesis when the Angels of Destruction said they will defer the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah in the condition that at least one man is righteous. The Librarian is, still and all UU is destroyed. At least he is spared, and so are the books.

It’s not wizardry’s fault that we spat on it. It’s the people handling it. Just like how religion has lost its rawest meaning—faith—because of the overseers that see it as another type of business. Just like how the basics of Economics—low supply, high demand, then the high price to allocate the commodities—is ravaged by capitalists. Everything will always have the potential to morph to a darker level when personal interest compounds. And for wizardry, Rincewind is its redemption.

Now I had to slip that before I proceeded in arranging my sentiments, I was actually reading several reviews, and I was amazed that Sourcery is rated rather poorly, at least compared to his first 4 books. I’m starting to wonder if something’s wrong with me for opposing the general readers. Is it that my thinking is relatively shallow? Because I know that I’m having fun. Because the craft was so vivid and dark that it was immersive. In fact, I had many reactions to every page that it was hard to finish the book early because I had to take advantage of the luscious portrayals of the scenes and the players. I’m not trying to be different from the rest to call internet lurkers to view my blog. This is my truest stance for the book.

Sourcery is a Discworld series still wealthy with wisecracks. But for a reader acclimated to Pratchett’s usual amount of humor, one would observe that the opulence curtailed. On the flip side, I found the quality becoming exquisite. And I’d be honest that I almost teared up when Rincewind realized that he will soon be swimming in the flood of the Mage War saturated with mud without the means to escape.

The towers would multiply and fight until there was one tower left, and then the wizards would fight until there was one wizard left.

In retrospect, this ruptures me—I don’t know about you—that I felt chastened and contrite for delighting at his misery in the previous books that involved him. Rincewind is at the bottom tier. He knew that and wholly accepted that without reserve. And he is even happy with the arrangement. But he won’t just lose his place in the tragedy. When you reconsider the cliche, you realize how heavy it is to be close to losing a life.

“Yes, I’m a wizard all right,” Rincewind hissed. “A wizard who isn’t much good at magic! I’ve managed to survive up till now by not being important enough to die! And when all wizards are hated and feared, exactly how long do you think I will last?”

You would say the same thing that Nijel stated. That he can just drop his hat and stop being a wizard. And because he’s not very outspoken when sincerity is required, he can only do a monologue: 

He’d never been any good at magic, but that wasn’t the point. He knew where he fitted. It was right at the bottom, but at least he fitted… All he had was nothing, but that was something, and now it had been taken away.

I was overwhelmed with emotions that perhaps when there was a demand for Pratchett to devise another Rincewind series, he showed that he cannot just make humor out of the character’s adventures. He, too, has a heart for them. And if you think he is contented to be the only one to care, he crafted it so that we, or at least I, too, would care. Such fearsome pathos.

Now let’s get over these emotions and head to the comedy where Pratchett started the Discworld journey. The jokes are effortless. That’s a well-accepted fact. But I laughed shitless when Rincewind became indifferent to them that even if the black-clad assassins and Seriph’s harem are busy getting astounded of Nijel’s swordplay, he looked for an escape door instead. And while Conina is mildly worried over the loss of the hat, if it weren’t for being rude, he would have screamed, “Thank goodness!” because someone will do the task for him.

“Someone else could save the world, and he wished them luck.”

I have never met a character so repulsive of the plot.

In all the five books that I’ve read, Pratchett always gave souls to move non-living things. Compared to Esk’s staff, Coin’s was intricate with menace. Luggage has become the drunkard of orakh and unrequited love. Archchancellor’s hat was introduced, housing 200 minds of dead wizards. And Aladin’s carpet—well, something like that—was added but will only respond to an order opposite to what the commander wants.

The extra characters would seem disposable. I do take that comment. But before they were removed from the plot, Pratchett leavened their expositions. Coin has to delegate the burning of the Library. Of course, he has an abundant manpower resource. Why take the task by his hand? Someone has to steal the Archchancellor’s hat, and who is most competent to that but a seasoned thief, a barbarian-slash-hairdresser straying around Ankh-Morpork to respond to the demands of genetics? Conina’s gender is a form of feminism a man would not be disgusted with. Someone has to make Rincewind realize that he is a wizard, and for someone so clueless and bookish, Nijel succeeded as he lives up to the title of The Destroyer, breaking the walls of Rincewind’s introversion. And Creosote, well, Creosote has an eminent function of his own, and most of the time, he affects me into thinking that gold is no treasure if you have more than enough. Man, he is even agonizing over sobriety than on the loss of his estate. And that, like me, not really that good in assembling literature, is still desperately finding his muse. And even if their roles were reduced to be pedestrians of Apocralypse, someone has to continue the plot to witness the rise of the Ice Giants.

To sum these all up, Sourcery is where the worst state could still get worse. Sourcery is a transcendent fare of the man-versus-nature conflict. Sourcery is where you realize that magic can be entangled with Physics. Sourcery is where you can still trust a barbarian to be your hairdresser. Sourcery is where a human with godlike powers can also become a demagogue. Sourcery is where even the most unwilling man can use a sock as a weapon and nonetheless triumph without a swing.

Something to consider when you hold on to anger… go tell yourself, “See what you have achieved.” Then look around and find that pain and fear, and destruction are everywhere. Even so, Sourcery is explicitly Wicked.