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ampharos906's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death
Minor: Sexual content, Murder, Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, and Alcohol
theaceofpages's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
"Music with rocks in" has arrived at the Discworld. I feel like this book is a lot like Moving Pictures - you'll have the best experience if you like the real world subject matter that the book is based off of. I'll admit I'm not the biggest music follower so I'm sure a lot of it went over my head, but I still enjoyed it. Having also finished Men at Arms recently, I was struck by how cooperative the different races (particularly the dwarf and the troll) were in the band. I wish we had seen more of Susan and Death *and the Death of Rats and Albert) though as I was enjoying this subplot more (probably largely due to the fact that, as already mentioned, I'm just nit that into music).
I loved that we got to see more of the everyday Ankh-Morpork citizens in this book. I am particularly intrigued by the Duckman (who I am convinced looks like one of my first year chemistry lecturers although I have no basis for this - the thought just struck me during a lecture and nothing has happened since to make me change my mind). I also loved that we got to see more of Dibbler again! He really does have a skill for tracking down the next hot thing.
If you love rock and roll and its history and are interested in Pratchett, I suspect that this would be a good place for you to hop in! While there are definitely many familiar faces, it isn't strongly connected to any of the subplots. You'll be thrown into a rather chaotic parody of something you love, filled with terrible puns, strange characters in a stranger world, a mysterious instrument shop that sometimes crosses the street, instruments that may or may not be cursed and bad food courtesy of Dibbler that you should probably avoid.
I loved that we got to see more of the everyday Ankh-Morpork citizens in this book. I am particularly intrigued by the Duckman (who I am convinced looks like one of my first year chemistry lecturers although I have no basis for this - the thought just struck me during a lecture and nothing has happened since to make me change my mind). I also loved that we got to see more of Dibbler again! He really does have a skill for tracking down the next hot thing.
If you love rock and roll and its history and are interested in Pratchett, I suspect that this would be a good place for you to hop in! While there are definitely many familiar faces, it isn't strongly connected to any of the subplots. You'll be thrown into a rather chaotic parody of something you love, filled with terrible puns, strange characters in a stranger world, a mysterious instrument shop that sometimes crosses the street, instruments that may or may not be cursed and bad food courtesy of Dibbler that you should probably avoid.
Content Warnings
Minor: Death and Death of parent
albyatross's review against another edition
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
For a Discworld novel, it was just ok. I had higher expectations for a Death novel. (And if I'm being VERY honest, I'm actually kind of disappointed by this one.) It didn't seem to know if it wanted to BE a Death novel, or maybe a Susan novel, a wizard novel, a music story, or something else.
I think I am also not of the demographic that would have caught all the references, which this novel seemed to rely on more than average for a Discworld novel (whole sections seemed to be written just to make a pun, in a way that I found distracting verse others of this series).
In general, the ending makes this fairly skipable if you're not planning to read all the Discworld novels. If I had to recommend this, I probably wouldn't -- I'd probably just tell someone to read Mort instead. It's most of the same story line mechanics, minus the music bits, but overall done (imo) a fair bit better.
I think I am also not of the demographic that would have caught all the references, which this novel seemed to rely on more than average for a Discworld novel (whole sections seemed to be written just to make a pun, in a way that I found distracting verse others of this series).
In general, the ending makes this fairly skipable if you're not planning to read all the Discworld novels. If I had to recommend this, I probably wouldn't -- I'd probably just tell someone to read Mort instead. It's most of the same story line mechanics, minus the music bits, but overall done (imo) a fair bit better.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death
Minor: Alcohol
cyluho's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death
woweewhoa's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
A fun romp! A Discworld book about the rock/music industry and parodying that whole thing.
While this is a part of the Death focused books, he's much more of a side character this time around, and part of my critique of this book is that his motivation is kinda unclear and I don't really get what he's doing aha. Has absolutely nothing to really do with the music stuff all said. The whole plot this time around feels a bit more contrived(though the book Does know this and makes some jokes about it), so compared to some of the other Discworld books(like Moving Pictures, which I would align more similarly to this one) feel a lot more organic and the conclusions of everyone feels like it makes sense and is also very fulfilling!
But it's a fun time and I like how the events of the prior books are mentioned in this one, which I feel like I'm gonna get a lot more of as I continue on this train.
While this is a part of the Death focused books, he's much more of a side character this time around, and part of my critique of this book is that his motivation is kinda unclear and I don't really get what he's doing aha. Has absolutely nothing to really do with the music stuff all said. The whole plot this time around feels a bit more contrived(though the book Does know this and makes some jokes about it), so compared to some of the other Discworld books(like Moving Pictures, which I would align more similarly to this one) feel a lot more organic and the conclusions of everyone feels like it makes sense and is also very fulfilling!
But it's a fun time and I like how the events of the prior books are mentioned in this one, which I feel like I'm gonna get a lot more of as I continue on this train.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Alcohol, Violence, and Fatphobia
Minor: Racism
bluejayreads's review against another edition
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.0
The books in the Death subseries follow a similar pattern. Death has a crisis about something (usually something related to how he’s fundamentally not a human). Death does something royally stupid about it (in Mort, that was take an apprentice like a human would; in Reaper Man and now Soul Music, that’s just not doing his job). Things go very badly. And fundamentally, nothing changes.
I think that’s the root of my frustration with the Death books. At the end of each one, Death seems to realize that he’s fundamentally different from humans – he can’t be one or even act like one without horrible consequences. But then in the next Death book, he does it all over again. He learns nothing, and his actions overall change nothing. It minimally affects people he interacts with or who have to deal with him not doing his job, but consequences are always fixed by the end of the book. In fact, in this book, absolutely everything is undone and everyone forgets what happened, so there’s barely a point to having the story happen in the first place.
I don’t know if it’s some kind of commentary on the unchanging nature of death or what, but I wish he’d learn his lesson already. He is an interesting character, and I want to see him in plots where he actually gets to actively do something instead of just run away from his job and fail at being a human.
The books in the Death subseries are never all that much about death, either the character or the concept. Soul Music was instead about music. But it doesn’t actually get there initially. Death tries to master the human art of forgetting by joining the Klatchian Foreign Legion and drinking a lot of alcohol. Since we can’t have the exact same plot as Reaper Man, Death’s granddaughter Susan fills in for him. Her sections started off some interesting themes of education getting in the way of observable reality and how humans cope. And then it just lost the track of those because the music is the big thing in this book.
Although Susan is a fairly major player and Death gets some page time, the bulk of the plot focuses around Imp. He’s a country lad who came to Ankh-Morpork to make music, where he forms a band with the troll Cliff and the dwarf Glod and invent “Music With Rocks In.” It’s an obvious parody of rock music, and the band quickly becomes obvious parodies of rock stars – Imp’s full name even translates to “bud of the holly.”
I had a hard time with the characters. For supposedly being a book in the Death subseries, Death gets hardly any page time at all. Susan was supposedly seventeen, but she acted more like she was twelve. And Imp didn’t get much of a chance to be a character because he spent most of the book being basically possessed by music. The characters really seemed to be second to the ideas: Music, its effects on people, its role as a fundamental part of the universe. And a very heavy satire of young people and the rock and roll craze of 1960s-1990s. (A full half of the Discworld Wiki page for this book is a list of rock and roll culture references this book makes.)
That’s not to say it was all bad. There are plenty of Sir Terry’s signature witticisms and several genuinely funny moments. Characters from previous books, including the Unseen University wizards and C.M.O.T. Dibbler, are involved – and Archchancelor Ridcully is frankly hilarious. But this is the most specifically and heavily satirical Discworld book I’ve read so far, and since most of the rock and roll culture being satirized happened before I was even born, most of the satire fell flat for me. It’s not necessarily a bad book. It’s just not one that particularly worked for me.
Content Warnings
Moderate: War, Alcohol, Violence, and Death
Minor: Death of parent and Animal death
Fantasy racism
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