I don’t mean this as an insult, more as just a general description but this is only barely a book. More like one half a collection of Rincewind-In-Fantasy-Australia vignettes, while the other half is Terry Pratchett tries to teach the reader about evolution at the same time that the Unseen University faculty are having a really really really really REALLY long argument. Pratchett vaguely waves towards a plot here but it’s kind of whatever (Rincewind has to save Australia or something, also the librarian has a cold). You get the feeling that this isn’t so much a novel as it is an exercise in setting a bunch of characters loose in the world and seeing what happens.

I want to be clear, none of this is a complaint for me. A thing I’ve realized in the process of rereading this series is that my favorite moments pretty much always occur when characters are just standing around shooting the shit and this book is almost nothing but that. It’s a fun batch of characters bouncing off of each other, and the jokes mostly land. Sometimes that’s enough.