Plot
The events of the novel are a "game" between the Discworld gods Fate and The Lady (Luck) with the Discworld as their game board. At the end, the Lady says "I never play to win but I do play not to lose", and shows the gods Rincewind confronted by Australian-aborigine-type warriors.
After Eric. The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork is sent a letter from the Agatean Empire on the Counterweight Continent commanding him to "send us the Great Wizzard", the spelling on the hat of Rincewind. The Hex brings Rincewind, and exchanges him in the Aurient Agatean Empire with a live cannon. As usual, The Luggage follows, but having returned to the land of his wood and construction, feels free to seek a mate and reproduce, re-appearing at the end.
On the Counterweight Continent, Rincewind joins a previous companion Cohen the Barbarian who intends to steal the country with six other aged heroes, The Silver Horde. Child rebels have been inspired by "What I did on My Holidays", written by Twoflower, his companion in The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. The villainous Vizier Hong leads one of the five families — Hong, Tang, Fang, Sung, and McSweeney, and secretly funds the revolution which is only good for putting up polite posters, and sets them up to take the blame after killing the Emperor. When captured with two young rebel girls, Rincewind discovers Twoflower in the next cell, missing father to the girls, and tries to convince them to stay safe in the cells while he scouts, that is, runs as far away as possible.
Meanwhile, the Cohen Horde infiltrate the Forbidden city via underground sewers, take the empty throne, but are called out to face the besieging army. Back in the University, Hex is calculating the spell to bring Rincewind back, but the butterfly of Luck drops a small glob of honey, distracting an ant, altering the calculation.
Rincewind falls into a mysterious cave, filled with terracotta statues, the original, legendary Red Army of the first Emperor. In magic armour, he leads the terracotta army against the five family armies, winning mostly by accident. Cohen returns to Hunghung victorious, and re-proclaims himself Emperor. Just as Twoflower challenges Hong for the death of his wife, the Unseen University returns the lit cannon, that kills Hong and Horde's "Teach" Ronald Saveloy, who tried to civilize the barbarians with alternative vocabulary for swear words and polite behavior, but finally agreed to fight alongside and rides off with a Valkyrie. Rincewind is transported to "XXXX", an unexplored continent and another adventure.
Read more about this topic: Interesting Times
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)