Unseen Academicals

Locations
Call Number: Fantasy / Pratchett, Terry
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Pratchett, Terry	4-week checkout	On Shelf

The wizards of Unseen University in the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed forever.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

one of his best submitted by 21621031390949 on June 28, 2011, 12:19pm One of Pratchett's very best in the Discworld series. The professors and staff at Unseen University take on the game of "foot-the-ball" and the usual Pratchett chaos ensues. Very clever satire of the religion of sports. Love the Librarian as goalie! However, this would not be a good book to read as your first in the Discworld series, as it assumes the reader already has knowledge of previous books.

my beloved diskworld submitted by ferdoble on August 11, 2011, 3:47pm To describe Terry Pratchett’s books is a difficult thing to do. The disc world series is in a word fantastic. Terry Pratchett, would seem to use the disk world, to take any theme, or know story and then twist it in his own very humorous way. These are not always laugh out loud funny (sometimes they are), bur rather the sort of funny that just sort of lifts your spirits a little bit.

I will say that in some cases there isn’t always a really strong story, sometimes its just his characters moving through one of those twisted themes. I like them all, you may want to start with the Most Von Lipwig story line (“Going Postal” and then “making money”) as at least the first one has a really great story line.

I love to pepper my reading queue with these books to keep all those books that take themselves seriously fresh and interesting.

I recommend reading them ALL.

OR listening to them. The two main narrators of Terry Pratchett’s books are Stephen Briggs & Nigel Planer and they take Terry Pratchett’s phenomenal writing to a whole new level.

Funny and serious at the same time submitted by Jen Chapin-Smith on July 3, 2012, 1:24am Terry Pratchett belongs in the same class as Charles Dickens-- humor, memorable characters, complex plotting, and social commentary in a prolific body of work. He's definitely developed over time, so his recent work has been some of his best (despite his early-onset Alzheimer's).

"Unseen Academicals" is a good story, ostensibly about soccer. The decidedly un-athletic wizards of Unseen University realize they need to field a team or lose a large amount of money bequeathed to the University. A lowly goblin, whose usual job is ensuring that the wizards' candles are properly dribbly, finds he has a talent that may save the wizards a painful humiliation on the field. And a University undercook is 'discovered' as a model for the new dwarf chain mail (slogan: "No chafing!").

Of course, since it's a Discworld book, it's really about a lot of other things, too. Is biology destiny? What happens when you take someone on as a project, and that person develops a mind of their own? What should society do with the survivors of genocide? Can every group be successfully integrated into a multi-ethnic society? And, most centrally, how can we overcome the "crab pot" mentality that encourages oppressed people to drag each other down or scramble up at each others' expense instead of working together to fix things? This book certainly doesn't have the answers to all the questions it raises, but Pratchett has a rare gift for being both thought-provoking and hilarious.

Sports come to Discworld submitted by audreyh on June 15, 2015, 1:12pm Pratchett is, as always, hilarious. He tackles some pretty serious subtext in this book, which has bee one of my favorite things about his writing.

Another great addition to Discworld submitted by Team_ROX on August 1, 2018, 6:10pm You can’t go wrong with the Discworld books. Even though you don’t need to start with the first one, I would, since it’s a fun journey to get to know these characters. But even if you start with this one you’ll have a great time!