If all the Discworld books had been like Eric, well, okay, probably most people that I know would still have read them. They are, after all, competently written comedic fantasy. But they wouldn’t talk about them nearly as much as they do, at the least. I mean, as a representation of the kinds of things that tend to happen in Discworld, it is a top notch book. The problem is that, even as short a distance into the series as I am, I’ve come to expect a fair amount more incisive literary and social depth, and never mind the amount I expect from all the buzz that surrounds later books in the series. By contrast to that experience/buzz, this book was a merely[1] funny series of vignettes strung together as a parody of Faust with a horny thirteen-year old in the eponymous role and resident failure (as a wizard, too, but I more meant it with a capital F) Rincewind as the wish-granting demon. If that doesn’t make a lot of sense, well, that’s what the plot is for, yeah?
The sad thing is, I’m totally not joking about it being funny or a really good sample of the kind of thing that happens every day on the Disc. If there’s a moral to my story, it’s this: expectations are a fickle bitch. And as for great expectations, well, they were written by Dickens, which I think tells you everything you need to know.
[1] he says, as though that’s not a reasonably tough accomplishment on its own
The thing about _Eric_ is, it was originally published as an illustrated storybook, like _The Last Hero_. The funy-series-of-vignettes structure was written to accompany a series of funny images, and IMO it loses a lot without the pictures. I really have no idea why they’ve never reprinted the illustrated version–it’s not like nobody would buy it, you know?
I am definitely interested in this alternate version! And I’m glad I’m such a stickler about specifying which version of a book I read, since it makes this kind of detection so easy. But I suspect if it were easy to find a copy, I’d have already done so.
Yeah, you can see that the illustrated version is going for, like, $140 on amazon. I have been looking for a copy for YEARS, and mentally kicking myself for not buying it when it came out. If only I’d known, I’d have bought a dozen copies!