Eric (Discworld) [Mass Market Paperback]

Eric is a play on the Faust concept; you can tell because the word Faust is crossed out and replaced with Eric right there on the cover of the book. Conjure a demon, demand your heart's desire, that sort of thing. It is really an unusual Discworld novel. It is short for one thing, less than half the length of most in the series, the kid Eric is about the only child one ever finds anywhere in the Discworld and is annoying enough for all the ones we don't see, and, despite his constant troubles, we really don't see very much of Rincewind's back gradually fading away from us as he runs from danger. The book isn't that bad, really-the story is pretty good once you grasp all of it, there's an entertainingly irritable parrot that makes up for his small vocabulary by referring to things as wossname all the time, and we get a very revealing look at the Discworld's realm of eternal punishment. Still, Eric is just not fulfilling and never strikes a strong chord with the reader. I view it as quite the Discworld anomaly. Just because it isn't as good as Pratchett's other novels does not mean it is not funny, witty, and enjoyable, though.

What that means is that Pratchett didn't provide this novel with multiple interwoven plots, there isn't the female friend/companion who turns into a love interest (a staple of his novels) and all of the action is very narrowly focused on failed wizard Rincewind's escape from the Dungeon Dimensions, where he was trapped at the end of "Sourcery."

He gets out when Eric, Discworld's would-be Doctor Faustus, a spoiled brat turned amateur demonologist, summons a demon from Hell and gets ... well, him. Somehow, Rincewind has been gifted with the power to grant Eric's rather venal wishes. These take the duo (trailed by Rincewind's sentient and extremely dangerous Luggage) through time and space. Along the way, we get parodies of Aztec religion and Ponce de Leon, a particularly well-done riff on the Trojan War (superior in every way to the quicker one in "Pyramids"), visit the beginning and end of the universe and see what Hell is really like.

Without the need to slow down for a B-story, Pratchett moves through the story at a rapid clip, making this one of the best Rincewind tales to date, as well as tying up a loose end. (Pratchett has a bad habit of doing that with Rincewind; the first Discworld novel ended with him falling off the edge of the planet.)

Know that you're getting what amounts to a novella in a novel's packaging, but otherwise, "Eric" lives up to the high standards Pratchett has set with his previous works.

Recommended to fans of Discworld and Pratchett's collaboration with Neil Gaiman, "Good Omens."