Author: Terry Pratchett
Apart from Terry Pratchett's children's books, Pratchett has never really been an author that I have had any interest in reading. I have tried to read some of his Discworld novels previously but never really got past the first few pages but after receiving this book as part of a brilliant collection for sale at The Book People online (not being sponsored at all, their collections are just amazing!), I thought I should try reading Terry Pratchett because I now actually own one of his books. Eric is a really short book, at only around 150 pages and I thought that this would be the perfect one to start with. Eric is about a fourteen year old demonology enthusiast who summons a demon to grant him three wishes, but instead he gets Rincewind, the most incompetent wizard in Discworld.
I found that although the idea of the plot and the synopsis on the back of the book looked interesting, the execution lacked a deep plot and it seemed to end quite suddenly. I appreciate that this is a short book, and that there was not really much time for development but I found that it just seemed to describe a chain of events with no real conclusion. Although I did like the plot, I think that if the book was longer there would have been more time to develop the story as I felt that the book seemed unfinished somehow.
I really liked the characters in this book. Rincewind reminded me very much of Radagast from Tolkien's The Hobbit in that he is incompetent as far as a wizard goes, and a bit eccentric. I think that I would like to read more about Rincewind in Terry Pratchett's other books but I don't think that the character was really explored to his fullest in this book.
Overall I think that the writing style was something that I could happily read in another one of this author's books, though it did take a bit of getting used to. I loved the world building and think that the writing style lent itself well to this fantasy style of book.
On the whole, I would give this book 3 out of 5 stars, and although I didn't particularly enjoy Eric, I would be interested in reading other Terry Pratchett books as I really liked the way that it was written and the world that Pratchett created.
No comments:
Post a Comment