The Last Continent recap

Rincewind is stranded on the last continent, a hot, red land at the Rim of the Disc where it has not rained for longer than anyone can remember, and where a talking kangaroo named Scrappy keeps telling him that fixing this is his job. At Unseen University the Librarian falls ill and begins shape-shifting uncontrollably; curing him requires his true name, which only Rincewind is likely to know. Hunting for him, the Archchancellor and several senior wizards step through a doorway with the housekeeper Mrs Whitlow and arrive on a remote island thousands of years in the past, where the God of Evolution is designing creatures one at a time and has never thought of sex. Their presence in the past is part of why the last continent turned out as it did. Rincewind meanwhile is mistaken for a wanted man, nearly hanged, chased across the outback and into the city of Bugarup, where the local university and its Archchancellor Bill Rincewind expect him to end the drought. He reaches a cave whose paintings make things real and puts the rain back. The wizards get home, the Librarian is cured, and Rincewind is finally given a post.

Previously: Rincewind is a wizard of Unseen University who cannot cast a spell, treats running away as a professional skill, and has survived an improbable number of disasters. He guided Twoflower, the Disc's first tourist, through the ruin of half a continent, was lost outside reality in the Dungeon Dimensions, was summoned into Hell by a teenage demonologist, and was most recently press-ganged into a revolution in the Agatean Empire, where his part in the fighting helped put Cohen the Barbarian on the imperial throne. Offered a reward, he asked only to be returned to the quiet desert island where he had once been perfectly happy. The wizards of Unseen University obliged with a spell, and the spell went wrong. He was deposited instead on the last continent at the Rim of the Disc, which is hot, red, very large and almost entirely unmapped.

Rincewind is alone on the last continent, walking through country that is dry beyond anything he has seen, where the plants, the insects and most of the wildlife are actively hostile and the water is somewhere else. A kangaroo appears, calls itself Scrappy, talks, and turns out to be considerably more than a kangaroo. It informs Rincewind that the continent has a serious problem and that he has been selected to solve it, and it declines to be more specific or to go away. Back in Ankh-Morpork, Unseen University has a crisis of its own: the Librarian is ill, feverish and shifting shape at random, turning into furniture and books without warning. The cure needs his real name, the one he had before the accident that made him an orangutan, and it emerges that nobody in the University has ever known it, with the possible exception of one former student who is not there.

The search for Rincewind takes the Archchancellor and several senior wizards into a disused part of the University, through a doorway that has no business being there, and out onto a small tropical island under a sun that is in the wrong place. The housekeeper, Mrs Whitlow, is swept along with them. They cannot go back the way they came, the island is small, hot and apparently uninhabited, and Ponder Stibbons is alone in thinking any of this worth investigating. On the last continent, Rincewind is discovering that a stranger with a foreign accent attracts attention from the authorities, and that on this continent the authorities favour hanging. Scrappy keeps reappearing to hurry him along a route he has not agreed to take.

Rincewind is chased across the continent, mistaken for a notorious sheep-stealer, entered into a shearing contest, put in front of a rope, and repeatedly rescued by luck he has no control over. He acquires a reputation he does not want, is sold indefensible meat pies by a trader named Fair Go Dibbler, and drinks a great deal of beer in towns where the beer has become more important than the vanished water. On the island, the wizards meet its only inhabitant: a god who makes living creatures individually, by hand, and is deeply committed to beetles. They are impressed by his workshop, appalled by his working method, and eventually explain to him that most worlds let creatures make more of themselves, which is an idea he has genuinely never had. Ponder also establishes the thing the others have been refusing to hear: the island is not merely somewhere else but a very long way in the past, and their being there at all is beginning to look less like an accident.

Rincewind arrives at Bugarup, the continent's principal city, and finds Bugarup University, a college of wizardry run on lines that would horrify Unseen University and which functions perfectly well. Its Archchancellor is Bill Rincewind, a distant relation, and the local wizards have their own view of what a visiting Great Wizard is for. The drought dominates everything: the rivers are gone, the brewers are struggling, and a continent-wide expectation has settled on the newcomer that he will make it rain. Rincewind, who cannot make anything happen on purpose, tries to leave and is prevented, by the authorities, by the university, and by Scrappy, who has been steering him toward one particular place since the day he arrived.

Pursued through Bugarup and forced into a disguise he would rather not discuss, Rincewind gets out of the city and heads inland with help he did not expect, including from a local brewer with a direct interest in the water supply. The wizards on the island, meanwhile, realise that what they do in the distant past is shaping the continent Rincewind is standing on, and that some of its more improbable animals can be traced back to a suggestion made over dinner. Scrappy finally explains the shape of the problem: the rain did not simply stop, it was taken out of the world, and the place where that happened can still be reached. Rincewind goes there because every other direction has been closed to him.

Rincewind reaches a cave whose painted walls are where the continent was made, and where what is drawn becomes real. He puts the rain back, and it falls on the last continent for the first time in generations, ending the drought and the crisis Scrappy had been driving him toward. Scrappy, having got what was needed, resumes being an ordinary kangaroo. The wizards return from the island and from the past to Unseen University, leaving the God of Evolution with a labour-saving idea about reproduction that will change everything he does next. Rincewind supplies the Librarian's true name, the cure works, and the Librarian goes back to his shelves as an orangutan, which is what he has always preferred. Rincewind himself ends the book at Unseen University with a post of his own at last, and nothing immediately trying to kill him.

Rincewind reaches the place where the continent was made: a cave of paintings in which what is painted becomes real, and where the rain was drawn out of the world long ago. Doing the one useful thing of his career, he puts the rain back, and it falls on the last continent for the first time in an age, breaking the drought and ending the crisis Scrappy had been steering him toward from the day he arrived. Scrappy, having got what the continent needed out of him, goes back to being a kangaroo, or something that resembles one. The wizards, whose visit to the island in the distant past is part of why the continent is the way it is, get home to Unseen University, and the God of Evolution is left with a new and enormously labour-saving idea about reproduction and a great many creatures still to design. The Librarian's true name is finally supplied, he is cured, and he returns to his shelves as an orangutan and stays that way, since it has always suited him. Rincewind ends up back at Unseen University with a post of his own at last, no longer a student who never graduated, and, for the moment, nothing chasing him.