The Last Continent (A Discworld Novel) - Hardcover

Terry Pratchett

4

57,687 ratings by Goodreads

9780385409896: The Last Continent (A Discworld Novel)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385409893 ISBN 13: 9780385409896

Publisher: Doubleday, 1998

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This is the Discworld’s last continent, a completely separate creation.

It’s hot. It’s dry . . . very dry. There was this thing once called The Wet, which no one now believes in. Practically everything that’s not poisonous is venomous. But it’s the best bloody place in the world, all right?

And it’ll die in a few days, except . . .

Who is this hero striding across the red desert? Champion sheep shearer, horse rider, road warrior, beer drinker, bush ranger and someone who’ll even eat a Meat Pie Floater when he’s sober? A man in a hat, whose Luggage follows him on little legs, who’s about to change history by preventing a swagman stealing a jumbuck by a billabong?

Yes . . . all this place has between itself and wind-blown doom is Rincewind, the inept wizard who can’t even spell wizard. He’s the only hero left.

Still... no worries, eh?

The Last Continent is the twenty-second in Terry Pratchett’s phenomenally successful

Discworld series.

Terry Pratchett would like it to be known that The Last Continent is not a book about

Australia. It’s just vaguely Australian.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Terry Pratchett's 22nd Discworld novel, The Last Continent, is a lighthearted tour of the fantasy land of Fourecks, a very Australian sort of place, with brief courses in theoretical physics and evolution thrown in for good measure. Pratchett returns to his first Discworld protagonist, the inept and cowardly wizard Rincewind, who habitually runs into trouble as fast as he flees. Rincewind's arrival in Fourecks has distorted the space-time continuum, and he has to sort it out before the whole place dries up and blows away. The situation is complicated because the actual problem is located 30,000 years in the past--just where the Faculty of the Unseen University currently are. Pretty frightening, given "the true wizard's instinct to amble aimlessly into dangerous places," and then "stop and argue ... about exactly what kind of danger it [is]."

If you're baffled by all this, no worries, mate. You needn't have read Pratchett before--not even the five previous Discworld novels starring Rincewind (The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Sourcery, Eric, and Interesting Times)--to enjoy this latest romp. Nor to have visited Australia. When you finish, however, you'll likely want to rush out and do both. --Nona Vero

Review:

"Pratchett's humour takes logic past the point of absurdity and round again, but it is his unexpected insights into the human morality that make the Discworld series stand out" (Times Literary Supplement)

"Delightful... gleeful and downright mischevious. The pleasures on the page are so quirkily seductive. Puts one in mind of one of the greatest comic writers of them all PG Wodehouse" (Sunday Telegraph)

"A minor masterpiece. I laughed so much I fell from my armchair" (Time Out)

"The humour sparkles as brightly as ever" (The Times)

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