Author: Terry Pratchett
Publisher: Vista
Copyright: 1990
ISBN: 0-575-60001-2
I first read this one when I was still an undergraduate -- not too long after reading both Marlowe's Faust and Dante's Divine Comedy, so I was in a particularly good position to appreciate some of the satirical references. Returning to the book many years later hasn't dampened any of my original enthusiasm -- it's every bit as good as I remembered.
My very first encounter with the Discworld was in TCOM, and while I've never been a particularly big fan of *that* book, I've always treasured a bit of a soft spot for Rincewind. In Eric, the role of eternal-optimist, never-quite-realist companion is filled, alternately, by Eric Thursley, and Ponce da Quirm. Frankly, I've always found that Rincewind's best scenes have always had the slightly annoyed, always disbelieving chemistry between him, and Twoflower, or whoever the foil du jour is.
I've always thought that this particular DW novel felt a bit compartmentalized. It's a bit different from the standard format, but not quite divided into chapters like the children's books. There seems to be a very definite Prelude, in which the stage is set for Rincewind running through the Dungeon Dimensions (or in the space between there and here?). Canto I (if I may borrow the Divine Comedy reference) sets the stage and builds the relationship between Rincewind & Eric. Canto II is the First Wish -- to be Ruler of the World, and the Tezumen story. Canto III is the Second Wish -- to meet the most beautiful woman in the world, and the story of the Tsortean war. Canto IV is the Third -- to live forever, literally from the beginning of the universe, with a bookend apocalyptic vision of Astfgl the demon king at the end. Finally we come to the final Canto with the showdown in a newly-renovated Hell. The compartmentalization sometimes makes the book feel like several separate stories that were never quite enough to make it on their own, and were stitched together into one narrative.
Don't get me wrong. As a former Classics major, I enjoyed the trip to the topple-less towers of Tsort. I enjoyed the Creation/End sequences. They provided a very good Creation account for the Discworld, which I'd always wanted. The introduction of Hell, and the first significant treatment of its denizens is also very good. It's worth noting that here we see a major exposition of the moral relativism that permeates the DW novels when it comes to death -- everyone gets pretty much exactly what *they* think they deserve. Couple that with the notion that eternal torment stops working if you realize you don't have the necessary hardware to feel pain anymore, and we get Discworld demons that are pretty much the mirror image of the gods -- all posture and bravado, but without any real ultimate power over the human soul. They're cosmic window dressing -- they're there because you have to have that sort of thing in a well-run world. All that having been said, this was perhaps the most chilling depiction of Hell that I've yet come across -- mind-numbing tedium that made me several times promise to fly right and be a better person. Incidentally, did anyone else pick up on parallels with Good Omens?
Eric has some classic understated Pratchett irony going on, though: Ponce da Quirm finding the Fountain of Youth, but not realizing that the water needs to be boiled before drinking; Elenor of Tsort being the most beautiful woman in the world, but now being the mother of many children, running to fat, with the beginnings of a mustache; the theophany of the Tezumen god Quezovercoatl, only to be instantly squished by the many feet of the Luggage.
Perhaps my favourite bit of the book runs as such:
You take, for example, a certain type of hotel. It is probably an English version of an American hotel, but operated with that peculiarly English genius for taking something American and subtracting from it its one worthwhile aspect, so that you end up with slow fast food, West Country and Western music and well, this hotel.
It's early closing day. The bar is really just a pastel-pink panelled table with a silly ice bucket on it, set in one corner, and it won't be open for hours yet. And then you add rain, and let the one channel available on the only TV be, perhaps, Welsh Channel Four, showing its usual mobius Eisteddfod from Pant-y-gyrdl. And there is only one book in this hotel, left behind by a previous victim. It is one of those where the name of the author is on the front in raised gold letters much bigger than the title, and it probably has a rose and a bullet on there too. Half the pages are missing.
And the only cinema in the town is showing something with sub-titles and French umbrellas in it.
And then you stop time, but not experience, so that it seems as though the very fluff in the carpet is gradually rising up to fill the brain and your mouth starts to taste like an old denture.
And you make it last for ever and ever. That's even longer than from now until opening time.
And then you distill it. . . .
I'm not quite sure how this book-review module works, but I hope that the link I posted above to the cover art means you can see the cover of the edition I read. Notice the author's name in raised gold letters just a bit bigger than the title of the book.. 
All in all, a fine book, not quite as clever and timely as the later books, and lacking the i-don't-know-what of the early ones. I'd give it 3 and a half 'Ooks' out of five. (Can't anyone dream me up an 'Ook' emoticon?) 
