Soul Music

Soul Music is the third entry in the Death sub-series of Discworld, and marks a low point in my journey with the character. This book was at some points a legitimate slog to make it through, but when it hit its stride, it hit heights that I wasn't quite expecting from it.

The book opens with Death reaping Mort and Ysabell from the first Death novel, intermingled with scenes of their daughter, Susan, receiving the news. Death, reeling from having to kill his daughter and former apprentice, goes off on a journey to understand the purpose of life, and by extension the Duty. This leaves an opening that has to be filled, or else the events of Reaper Man might be repeated, so Susan is forced to take up the mantle, and do the job in Death's stead.

Meanwhile, a young man arrives in Ankh-Morpork, looking to be the world's greatest musician, and with the help of a powerful magical guitar, takes the city by storm, creating a new type of music. Music with rocks in it.

It's not really accurate to call this a Death novel if I'm being honest, as he has extremely little screentime in this, with the focus sitting squarely on Susan, who, despite being a fairly solid character, doesn't bring much new to the table, as her arc is a sort of retreading of Mort's arc. It's concluded in a different way, but the steps that got us there felt very similar.

Despite being content with how Death was handled, I would have loved to see more of his journey of self discovery, as each of those scenes were highlights of the book, and only served to strengthen my absolute adoration of the character.

I really enjoyed getting a more in depth dive into Ankh Morpork's culture, as so far, all I've read has been Death, so I haven't really had an opportunity to get a grasp on what the city was like, so getting Buddy's PoV as he also has to learn about was a really good introduction to the culture of the city. The guilds were a definite highlight of the book.

Something I didn't really connect with was the satire of the book. I didn't think it was quite as clever as the previous two, and I think that's down to the fact that it's laser focused on one specific topic, making the humour feel really inflexible at times. It felt like it was relying on a lot of in jokes for a specific community, which is a shame, though when it was at it's best, it shone as brightly as the other works I've read from him.

The biggest issue with this book has to be the fact that it absolutely refused to go anywhere for a good quarter of it's page count. I understand that it's introducing a new character to the readers, but oh my lord, I was bored shitless for a good chunk of the book. It was definitely funny, and it had a few highlights here and there, but overall, it's early pacing was just really sluggish, which was a massive issue for me, especially since I started this the same day I finished Reaper Man, which had exceptionally tight pacing.

The middle section wasn't much better, as there's a subplot going on throughout the book, where Ridcully is trying desperately to understand the science behind Music with rocks in it. But this kicks off pages after we get a perfectly sufficient explanation from Death about what's going on. Overall, the entire wizard aspect of this book was fairly monotonous, and I feel like it getting trimmed down to their newfound obsession with the music would have probably led to the entire book flowing in a much better manner overall.

The conclusion of the book was genuinely the only point where I was content with the pacing of the story, as I felt like it wasn't missing a beat there. There wasn't any plodding along. It had a point, and it made sure to get to it before the reader got bored of it.

Despite my issues with the book, I still walked away having enjoyed my time with the book, though I'm beginning to expect that it's going to be nigh on impossible for me to not enjoy a Pratchett novel to some degree, as they're just utterly wonderful. It's a solid 3.5 stars, and despite my issues, I still fully recommend this book.