I love all the Discworld books with Susan, but there's a special place in my heart for Soul Music. There are so many puns in here that I think you could read it a dozen times and still not get everything there is to get. ( )

Death is feeling extremely melancholy. He wants to know what it's all about, and what humans do to forget. After getting some not-so-helpful advice from his manservant, Albert, he decides to go on a journey to forget everything. Thus, he ends up in the Klatchian Foreign Legion, a place so forgetful that the soldiers forget what they're saying in the middle of saying it. Somebody must take over his job, however, and this time the task falls to his granddaughter, Susan. Susan has been made to forget everything about being Death's granddaughter, so when Death's assistant, the Death of Rats, comes to recruit her, she's very skeptical about the whole thing. Gradually, though, she starts to remember things and decides that she can do the job. But she starts suffering attacks of conscience, not wanting to follow the job description. She wonders why good people must die when they do, and why bad people can't die sooner, etc. She stumbles upon Imp y Celen, a bard who is supposed to die but is saved by some mysterious force. Imp, along with a dwarf and a troll, have seemingly brought a new form of music to the Disc. It's Music with Rocks In. It's got a great beat and you can dance to it. The crowd goes wild, throwing various undergarments onto the stage. The problem is, though, this music is alive. And it wants to stay that way--no matter what it does to a mere bard. Or civilization, for that matter. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1281901...

I'd been rather avoiding this Discworld novel because I feared it would be much the same as Moving Pictures and Maskerade, both of which are essentially one-joke books where the joke is stretched beyond its limits. But actually it's much better. For a start, a lot of jokes about rock music are actually funny, riffing lots of little laughs off the one big laugh. Also, the idea of Music With Rocks In fits into the Discworld milieu much more comfortably than either cinema or opera. And another story element is the relationship between Death and Susan, which gets rather similar plotting in other books but somehow seemed to work better here. Good to have caught up with this one at last. ( )

Before I began this book, I wasn't sure that I would enjoy it and so kept putting off starting on it (besides which, I have a long to-read list — who doesn't?). My experiences with other strongly themed Discworld novels haven't always been so good, which of course stand out over the really fantastic ones, the way negative experiences do. For example, Eric and Moving Pictures completely underwhelmed me, and though I quite liked Pyramids and Small Gods, I can't really put those into the same group as the former two, despite all four having "strong" themes. Perhaps it's a general versus specific thing, or maybe the subjects of the satire/parody themselves, I don't know.


The point of all this is that I expected Soul Music to resemble Moving Pictures and thus to leave a bad taste at the end. And there are an awful lot of similarities, from the punny pop-culture-referencing names to the way the wizards (and Librarian) get caught up in the magic of the thing, to the way Discworld itself reacts to whatever that new thing is (cinema and rock'n'roll music). So I suppose the patterns of the two stories really aren't all that different. But, and here's the thing, Soul Music didn't leave me disappointed.


A lot of the Discworld novels I've read (Moving Pictures being a prime example) work quite well at the beginning and middle, but it soon becomes obvious that everything that happens is a set-up for a particular end result, which ultimately fizzles and feels too forced. As good as the rest of the book is, that kind of ending just ruins the whole thing.


Luckily, either Soul Music doesn't have this problem, or by only being able to read it a little at a time during my breaks at work, I managed to avoid noticing it. Whatever the case, I enjoyed the book all the way through, despite my expectations otherwise. The featured characters definitely didn't hurt any, either — I love anything with C.M.O.T. Dibbler, and Death trying to figure out humans, and the Librarian (but who doesn't?), so naturally this book appeals to me there. Susan and the wizards were good, too, and I even found myself liking the Band With Rocks In, even though I cared very little for their counterparts in Moving Pictures.


I do have one tiny nitpick, though. What's up with the way the Librarian disappeared around two thirds of the way through, only to show up doing something completely different at the end? He was on tour with the band, I thought, then suddenly not there anymore? I tried to go back to figure out when he disappeared, but couldn't quite manage, with my limited reading time, and it bugged me.


But, anyway, I guess to sum up, I didn't expect to like Soul Music, but I do, and it was funny, and even if not my favorite Discworld novel, it was pretty dang good. ( )

"Music with rocks in" - this book is based on rock music coming to the Discworld. I have to say I absolutely loved it. Fairly similar to Reaper Man in that Death stops doing his job so Susan has to take over, it's another entertaining novel that has enough Welsh jokes and wizards to keep me amused. Another favourite in the series! ( )