A Review of Unseen Academicals

It pains me to give a Discworld novel a less than stellar rating, but I found this one lacking in some way. It started out promisingly — the wizards at Unseen University find that in order to keep a sizable endowment, they must play a game of commoner “football,” or as it is known, “foot the ball.” They are aghast, but are more aghast at the thought of their losing any of their nine meals a day, so they begin to form a team led by Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully. Meanwhile, Lord Vetinari, the city’s benevolent tyrant, has decided he wants to control this game, forming leagues and handing out gold looking trophies and he wants the wizards to lead the way. Promising start, yes?

Unfortunately, it’s all ruined by a Romeo and Juliet love story between Trev and Jewels, two new characters. We also meet Glenda, a forceful cook in charge of UU’s Night Kitchen and Mister Nutt, a goblin (who later turns into an orc) who is adept at pretty much anything. Trev takes Nutt to his first football match, where the crowd does “the Shove,” and where the wizards are in search of pie, and Nutt is really taken with it. So much so, that he grabs the ball and scores the game winning goal.

Somehow it comes to the wizards’ attention that Nutt has some skills, so they make him coach of the team. They ask Trev to join, as he’s the son of a late, great football player, but Trev declines, saying something along the lines of “I promised me old mum” he’d never play. This is repeated so freakin’ often, Pratchett pretty much beats the reader to death with it. It gets old very quickly. And of course, you know Trev ends up playing. Duh.

So Jewels becomes a fashion model for dwarves and becomes quite famous and in demand. Glenda acts as her manager. Nutt seems to develop a thing for Glenda, which is odd because one traditionally doesn’t think of “things” happening between goblins and humans. But Glenda feels her heartstrings being tugged at for the first time in her life and she loves it.

I guess my main complaint is, the book really isn’t so much about foot the ball as it is about Nutt and his relationships with others, such as Trev and Glenda. And while that’s moderately interesting, the humor that could have been attached to a book devoted to a book of the wizards playing at foot the ball solely could have been pretty forceful. This, however, is rather mediocre. It’s a romance, with football as its backdrop. I feel disappointed. I’d recommend it to Pratchett fans, but not to anyone else.

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