Plot summary: The eighth son of a complete jerkface of a wizard shows up at the Unseen University. Wizards' eighth sons are always sourcerers (a source of magic; extremely overpowered). This wouldn't be terrible except the jerkface wizard cheats Death by sticking his consciousness into a staff, then uses that staff to instruct his son in magic. Meanwhile, Rincewind reluctantly teams up with some people to steal the Archchancellor's hat at its request because it doesn't like Coin, the sourcerer, who's like eleven at the time.
Rincewind's sole desire in life is to succeed in attaining life, liberty, and the pursuit of boredom. All he really wants is to be able to be bored. Unfortunately for him, he keeps getting thrown into random dangerous situations. He also apparently can't use any magic at all, which leads to him |heading off to fight Coin with half a brick in a sock as a weapon|.
We also encounter the "dungeon dimensions" in this one, and I'm still not sure what's going on with those. Apparently they're full of eldritch monsters that eat magic, or something.
This one predates the Unseen University as we know it, by which I mean Ponder Stibbons and Archchancellor Ridcully are nowhere to be seen and the Bursar is a different person (or possibly the same person but a lot saner). And Hex hasn't been created yet.
Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for crude humor and swearing.
Favorite lines:
The Hashishim [earlier described as the original Assassins], who derived their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over.
Page 148.
...a tall, saturnine figure appeared from behind the pavilion. He had the look of someone who could think his way through a corkscrew without bending, and a certain something about the eyes which would have made the average rabid rodent tiptoe away, discouraged.
That man, you would have said, has got Grand Vizier written all over him. No one can tell him anything about defrauding widows and imprisoning impressionable young men in alleged jewel caves. When it comes to dirty work he probably wrote the book or, more probably, stole it from someone else.
He wore a turban with a pointy hat sticking out of it. He had a long thin moustache, of course.
Page 150.
Appearances of Death count: 8.
(Endnote: As it turns out, if wizards actually used magic to fight... well, that |happens in this book|. It's rather apocalyptic.)
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