Soul Music

Soul Music is definitely the punniest Discworld novel so far. Every other line seems to be a joke or a reference. Since the theme of this book is classic rock, most of those puns are references to real world bands and songs. It's fun to pick up on them, and that was a big part of my enjoyment of this book the first time I read it.

In my memory, this was one of my favorite Discworld stories, probably because it was one of the first where I was able to pick up on all of the jokes. It also centers on Death, which is always fun, and introduces his granddaughter, Susan, who is one of the greatest characters in the entire series.

But despite these highlights, this book didn't quite live up to my memory of it. I didn't dislike it, but it felt disconnected in the way Discworld books often do. There's a story about Death attempting to forget, a story about Susan attempting to fill his shoes while he's away without leave, and a story about living music possessing a young musician and forcing him to live on past his death. Two of them intersect quite nicely, but the Death plot just seems like an excuse to get him out of the way so Susan can step up.

I'm sure there's a connection if I were willing to look a little harder for it. But the truth is that I didn't quite care enough to. This was a fun book on the surface, and that's all I really need it to be. It's a send up of and love letter to classic rock and music in general. And I'm not sure that I care what Death's inability to forget anything really has to do with that.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more