The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett
book, review, discworld
This review was originally posted at Goodreads and imported here later with next to no spell/grammar checking.
3/5 stars
The Silver Horde, a group of elderly hero barbarians is bored. They’ve achieved everything they even wanted and ruling the empire they conquered in the Interesting Times is just not that exciting. So they go for the last great adventure: return the first flame (stolen by the First Discworld hero who is still suffering for his folly) to the gods with interest and blow them all to pieces.
This could have unforeseen consequences and so Lord Vetinari sends out Leonard of Quirm, Carrot Ironfoundersson and of course Rincewind.
And… it just isn’t particularly exciting to me. It is a pretty straightforward hero’s journey that definitely has its moments and cool characters, but it just didn’t grip me as much as a lot of the other Discworld books did.
That said, it is a pretty short book and a pretty decent read. I’ve had fun, it just doesn’t stand up particularly well compared to the rest. That said, I’m less enamoured with the whole Rincewind subseries in general.
If you are interested in picking this up, it pretty much directly follows the Interesting Times book so I’d read that first. The other Rincewind books are less crucial, but still useful to appreciate it fully.
