Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett
In this later installment of the Discworld saga, the ancient game of Foot-the-Ball is gaining popularity and casualties. Played with a lethally solid wooden ball, not in an arena but through the streets of Ankh-Morpork, it has attracted ruffians who routinely stab, bludgeon, or stomp on victims - and they're only spectators. With the players, the game becomes murderous. No player ever breaks a rule, because there are no rules to break. It's only getting worse,
Then the wizards of Unseen University learn that one of their most important endowments comes with a small-print caution: The University must field a team and play football at least once every twenty years or lose millions. Archchancellor Ridcully and young Ponder Stibbons set about, under the auspices of the Patrician, revising (i.e. inventing) the rules of the game, recruiting reluctant players from faculty and staff. One of these is Mr. Nutt, a humble candle dribbler, who knows more than one would think and philosophically joins in to make football a, well, fair game.
Mingling with this arc are two Romeo-and-Juliet couples, a Cinderella girl and her unprincely lover, a sociopathic young street thug who would like to slaughter those whom he dislikes (everyone), a fashionista, and thick layers of ethnic prejudice, for Mr. Nutt may be the very last of his kind, a despised and persecuted group. It's familiar territory for Pratchett.
Unfortunately, there are plot lines that go nowhere, characters who seem important and then vanish into the background, and not enough typical Pratchett wit and foolery. The climactic piece is, of course, the crucial Big Game, with some high points: the former Dean, now Archchancellor of an upstart new school of wizardry, makes an astonishingly good referee, the goalie recovers from the effects of a sinister poisoned banana, and Mr Nutt and the holdout player Trevor (also employed in the UU candle department) cooperate to show the hooligans what good clean play can accomplish.
...and then four separate conclusions, like ducks in a row, none adding much to the book.
All of this doesn't quite gel, and it might have succeeded better with some judicious editing. It's only second-rate Pratchett, but admittedly, second-rate Pratchett is better than first-rate almost anything else.
