Unseen Academicals

A Discworld Novel

By: Terry Pratchett

Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Bill Nighy, Peter Serafinowicz

Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

“Football, food, fashion and wizards collide in Pratchett’s affectionate satire on the foibles of sports and sports fans. . . .The prose crackles with wit and charm. . . . At its heart, this is an intelligent, cheeky love letter to football, its fans and the unifying power of sports.” —Publishers Weekly

Football (aka soccer) comes to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork, upending the wizards of Unseen University—and dividing Discworld—in this wonderfully funny novel in Sir Terry Pratchett’s internationally bestselling Discworld series (and the 7th book in the Wizards collection). This fantastic new recording is read by Colin Morgan (Merlin; Belfast), with Golden Globe award-winning actor Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) reading the footnotes, and Peter Serafinowicz (Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace) starring as the voice of Death.

The wizards at Ankh-Morpork’s Unseen University are renowned for many things—wisdom, magic, teatime—but athletics, not so much. When Lord Vetinari, the city’s benevolent tyrant, strongly suggests to Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully that the university revive its sports program and field a football team composed of faculty, students, and staff—or lose the funding that pays for their nine daily meals—the wizards of UU find themselves in a quandary. First, they have to understand what makes foot-the-ball so popular with Ankh-Morporkians. Then they have to learn how to play it—and win—without using magic.

Of course, the thing about football is that it is never just about football.

The Discworld novels can be read in any order but Unseen Academicals is the seventh and final book in the Wizards collection (and 37th Discworld book). The other books in the Wizards collection include:

• The Color of Magic
• The Light Fantastic
• Sourcery
• Eric
• Interesting Times
• The Last Continent

©2009 Terry Pratchett (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers

Really good but...

It was really good but I can't help but feel this should be a standalone book, I was super disappointed the last book in the rincewind series had next to zero rincewind.

wonderful, fantastic!

Fantastic storytelling, human personality insight, and humor! Terry Pratchett is a magnificent gift to humanity!

Some of the characters sound like muppets

The story is great fun, and I would say the strange voices didn’t derail my enjoyment entirely.
I loved everything except some of the character voices chosen by the actor. He’s been good in every other recording, but some of the choices in this one were odd. One of the main characters sounds so ridiculous, that when he was introduced I immediately assumed he would have a small, throwaway part in the story. How could a main character, with no textual indication he sounds like that, have SUCH a silly voice.

A fantastic Discworld book

Almost perfect, but the voice used for Trevor Likely sounded like a muppet, and not in a good way.

Great story. Not so great narration.

Very disappointing.

I have been listening to the original for years and honestly, that version narrated by Stephen Briggs is superior by several orders of magnitude.

This is the first (and hopefully ONLY) Disc World novel that has been re-recorded and released that more or less fails to at least stand up to the older Pratchett narrators (Nigel Planer and Stephen Briggs). The audio quality is exceptional, but that’s not enough. I will definitely be returning this one.

Lots if fun and heart

Colin Morgan does a good job with the voices (even the female ones), it was fun to listen too. The story is a wonderful mix of fairy tales and classic stories once again done brilliantly by Mr Pratchett. It kept me entertained as always. Just missed Death, not much call for him in this story, but you can’t have everything

absolutely loved

some of the voices chosen were a bit odd at first but overall a delightful listen

Nope.

Terrible choice of voices. Just can’t listen to this. The previous books read by Colin Morgan I did really enjoy. This one is unfortunately a fail.

the voices were just annoying.

I like the old recording much, MUCH better. I hardly got through an hour before giving up.

Could not get over Trev's voice

I have been enjoying the new renditions of the Discworld series, but I could not get past the first chapter of this book. The voices, the timing, the word emphasis all seemed off. The voices of Nutt and Trev in particular grated on my ears.