The Great Discworld Retrospective No. 27: The Last Hero

Way back in 1990, Gollancz showcased the work of artist Josh Kirby with a book filled with his artwork and an accompanying short story by Terry Pratchett. Eric, as it was titled, was a lavish affair that showed off Kirby’s talents as an artist beyond his facility for cover pages. Like a lot of fans, I loved it. After Kirby passed away in 2001, it seemed that a lot of what made the Disc as special as it was went with him and many folks wondered whose work would grace the covers instead.

However, it came out that there were a lot of folks who didn’t like the Kirby covers. They were sexist, it seemed, and just a little too messy for the books.

My only argument to this is that the Kirby covers were sexist because that’s what cover art was back in the day. Kirby was, at the very least, parodying a particular type of fantasy art, one that played to the stereotypes of the genre. However, the genre and its cover art had matured in the years since and for a lot of people, Kirby’s covers were the only example of that art style that they knew about. So the parody became the form. To be fair to Kirby, his covers had become a lot less sexist and ridiculous as time went on because he was paying attention to the trends of his field and modified his work to accommodate them, but in a way that was still recognisable as being in his own inimitable style.

Paul Kidby, a freelance artist, had been working on Discworld art since 1993. In 1996, Pratchett wrote some character sketches for a slim volume entitled The Pratchett Portfolio, which highlighted some of Kidby’s work. This was followed up in 2004 by The Art Of Discworld, a thicker tome that extended the remit of the Portfolio, and in 2017 by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Imaginarium, a truly beautiful book of his work from across his career in Discworld to date (I haven’t read his latest book, Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, so I cannot comment on it).

A particular skill of Kidby’s is in composing pictures that mimic other well-known works of art. An early work of his hinted at this by featuring a portrait of Death, Mort, Ysabell and Susan in the style of the Addams Family. This is further explored explicitly in the book under discussion here, The Last Hero.

Like Eric before it, it’s a showcase of the artist’s talent coupled with a longish story by Pratchett. The difference between The Last Hero and Eric is that the author has about a decade’s worth of more experience at putting stories like this together.

It’s the story of a problem facing the Disc that seems insurmountable: Cohen the Barbarian (last seen taking on the trappings of an emperor in Interesting Times) has tired of his luxurious life and seeks to return to the gods what was stolen from them thousands of years ago: fire.

However, this fire is taking the form of a particularly magical and nasty “firework” which threatens to destroy Cori Celesti, the home of the Gods, and disrupt the magical field that allows the Discworld to travel through the universe on the back of Great A’Tuin, which would in turn destroy all life on the Disc.

Cohen is doing this because he and his friends have become very old and he doesn’t like what the gods do to old men; making their lives a sad echo and mockery of the greatness that they once held (This whole idea is a worthy idea for a novel in itself and I’m sort of disappointed that it wasn’t explored further… however, Pratchett did begin fighting his own battle against those same forces of decrepitude less than a decade after this book was written, so in a sense, he did explore it further).

Once it becomes known what Cohen’s plan is, Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, assembles his own force to stop Cohen. It consists of Captain Carrot of the Watch, Leonard of Quirm, the renowned inventor and artist, Rincewind, Wiz(z)ard of sorts, and occasional friend of Cohen… and the Librarian of Unseen University.

These four Astron—sorry, Chelonauts are the only hope that the Disc has to stop Cohen’s mad plan…

The Last Hero is a lot more fun than any book deserves to be. It successfully marries the Watch and Wizard novels, creating a story that does both sets of books proud. Pratchett didn’t have his characters mingle in books terribly much for a lot of the first couple of dozen books in the series but after a while he succumbed to the inevitable and had them meet but usually only when it would be illogical for them not to. Hence, the mild mashup of Witches and Wizards in Lords And Ladies, the grand crossover event that only the audience is aware of in The Truth… and this story.

It works superbly, largely because Pratchett doesn’t overegg his pudding. We get a minor role for Ponder Stibbons and some of the other wizards, while the Patrician exists to serve as a conduit giving reasons for the characters to interact. Carrot is pretty much the only Watchman we meet in this story (Vimes appears briefly), so it feels a lot more organic and natural rather than when, say, comic books or TV shows do a crossover event.

There’s really a lot to enjoy in the story as well, so the loss of having, say, Vimes meet the Bursar, is made more palatable by having the characters pilot their spacecraft – named The Kite (a bird similar to an Eagle) – to the moon of the Discworld so that they can slingshot around it and reach Cori Celesti in time to stop Cohen. We get some memorable characters of the Discworld series doing a light waltz down the history of Science Fiction and the Space Race.

I really only noticed a few of them in my first read of the story but subsequent trips aboard The Kite have revealed a lot more… however, there’s a twist here as well: whereas Pratchett’s prose is frequently the source of these gags, Kidby’s illustrations of the story added so much depth to what was already a magic carpet ride through nostalgia: there’s a scene where Rincewind is tested for his ability to cope with high gravity. The idea behind the device under discussion will be familiar to anyone who has read The Right Stuff or seen documentaries about astronaut training. But in this case, the device – courtesy of an illustration by, er, Leonard Of Quirm, looks suspiciously like it could have been used by Vitruvian Man. And there are other nods to classics of Art and SF: Cyrano de Bergerac gets a mention through some events in the story, as do H. G. Wells, Star Trek, 2001 (“My God, it’s full of elephants!”), Planet Of The Apes (as well as a nod to some of the original chimp pilots of the early space program), Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” and countless other popular culture references.

But it’s not just space travel that gets side-eyed: Cohen’s side of the story also pokes a few burnt sticks at the eye of Heroic Fantasy and mythology.

The fire that Cohen wants to return was originally stolen by “Fingers” Mazda, which is a pretty obvious take on the legend of Prometheus (who was referenced in Eric, just as an aside). And the Gods of the Discworld are a pretty diverse bunch as well. There’s a few that we know already – Blind Io, the Lady, Offler – and one or two who will have some significance in later books as well – Nuggan, a god who will be responsible for the setup of Monstrous Regiment, makes his first appearance here, with a hint of his particular views on what humanity should and shouldn’t be doing in his name.

Honestly, though, Pratchett leaves Roundworld mythology largely alone during these parts of the book and focuses a lot more on the tropes of Fantasy, which Cohen has been stampeding over since his first appearance all the way back in The Light Fantastic. There’s a lot of work involved in putting them together – the character who has betrayed them in the past but appears to have turned over a new leaf; a bard who is going to make the story of The Silver Horde’s quest immortal; the henchmen who tag along for the ride… – but they are just prepping us for a climactic moment that defines just how much Cohen respects the cliches of his livelihood beyond almost anything else.

And everything is reinforced by the sublime artwork that graces the pages. Kidby’s attention to detail is astonishing: the diagrams that grace the pages give an immense amount of detail as to what is happening in the background of the story, whether it’s the different breeds of Swamp Dragon on the Disc, or the work that goes into creating a frying pan that can be used in space, or the mock-Bayeux Tapestry that graces one illustration… there’s a huge overflow of creativity that has gone into making this book as successful as it is.

No, not an overflow. Overflow implies that there is an excess of something, whereas everything on display here serves the story beautifully.

And it matches the huge surge in creativity that would mark what Pratchett would achieve over the next few books in the series, with Kidby acting as his muse alongside him.

Coming up next: There’s a cat and mouse game going on in Uberwald and someone will discover that paying the piper doesn’t always mean you get to call the tune in The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents.