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Eric occupies a kind of unhappy position in the Discworld canon. It has the misfortune of coming in right after the phenomenal Guards! Guards! and, clocking in at less than 200 pages, it doesn't really have enough substance to even have a chance at being counted among the heavy hitters of the series. Overall, this book gives off the impression of something that Sir Terry dashed off while he was waiting for the bus.

The biggest selling point to Eric is that, as Discworld novels go, this is one of the easiest to summarize - it's a pretty straightforward Faust parody, when a teenage magician summons a demon that will make all his wishes come true. Unfortunately for him, the perpetually unlucky wizard Rincewind got zapped to a prison dimension at the end of his last book, and the timing works out just right so that instead of a demon, Eric summons Rincewind. Shenanigans ensue.

Like I said, it's short, and there's not much there. But what is there remains a lot of fun, because even when he seems to be kind of phoning it in, Pratchett is still Pratchett.

"...demons belong to the same space-time wossname, more or less, as humans, and have a deep and abiding interest in humanity's day-to-day affairs. Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it's important to shoot missionaries on sight."