Eric

Eric is the ninth Discworld novel, and Terry Pratchett published it in 1990 in a larger illustrated format than the rest of the series, with pictures by Josh Kirby; later editions dropped the illustrations and appeared as an ordinary paperback. Some printings give the title as Faust Eric. The book is a parody of the Faust bargain, and it brings Rincewind back to the page after his disappearance at the end of Sourcery.

The joke underneath the book is that nothing in the arrangement works the way either party intends. Eric gets a wizard instead of a demon, Rincewind gets a master whose instructions have to be honoured, and the Luggage comes along, which means that whatever trouble they meet is likely to be eaten. Their tour takes in the Discworld's versions of the Aztec empire, the Trojan War and the classical underworld.

It is one of the shortest books in the series and among the fastest, since every wish drops the pair somewhere new and leaves Rincewind to talk his way back out. Pratchett uses the structure to visit corners of his world the longer novels never reach, and readers who know their classics will notice that a good many of the jokes are aimed at them specifically. The book shares its wizard with Sourcery and the novels that follow, and it assumes a reader who already understands that Rincewind's survival is a different thing from his competence.