Unlike the rest of Pratchett's oeuvre, I'd only ever read Eric once before this current re-read/send-off I'm doing of his work.

Maybe I'm being more lenient towards this than his other books because of it, but Eric was really funny. It's also -I think- the last time Pterry let his personal life (rather than personal beliefs, crucial difference) colour a book so thoroughly. It's short and snappy, the jokes are constructed with that meticulous, engineered zeal that he has, and the idea of torturing a soul with health and safety regarding the torture rather than torture itself is simultaneously droll and rather poignant.

A recurring theme of both this and Guards Guards was that while our monsters will torture us, murder us, eat us and what-have-you, at least they're monsters. We seem perfectly willing do all that stuff to one another with enthusiasm, then pretend it was in everyone's best interests.

It's a quick, raw, comedic hodge-podge of Faust and Alighieri, and it never really feels like a full-fledged story, but it's damn (ah-ha) good at what it does.