After being dumped onto the lost, unfinished continent of XXXX in his last appearance, Rincewind runs into Scrappy, a sarcastic talking kangaroo who has been sent by the creator of XXXX (not to be confused with the Creator of the Disc) to draft Rincewind into fixing the continent's lack of rain (water on XXXX comes from underground wells, and many natives consider rain to just be a myth). Rincewind, ever the reluctant hero, just wants to get off the island and go home, but keeps running into improbable situations that escalate his reputation.  A major sub-plot involves the staff of Unseen University accidentally sending themselves across time and space trying to find Rincewind, where they encounter the God of Evolution.

Starts off marvellously, lots of cool stuff with the faculty finding a pocket dimension inside a bathroom, and Rincewind talking to a kangeroo, however much of the book is given over to magically over eager bushes and trees that furnish the faculty with a number of surprising artifacts. Rincewind runs away a lot, he gets captured and thrown in a cell at one point and then the luggage appears as Trunki the transvestite furtinture in a skit on Pricilla Queen of the Desert, with a woman as a rather poor female impersonator. The endinng however is incomprehensible and a mess, it needs a rewrite but it's far, far too late for one...