LIVE FATS DIE YONGE

[bloodygranuaile]

One of the very earliest Discworld books I read was Soul Music, it might even have been the second, after The Truth. Since then I know I've reread it, since the first read was a library copy and now I own one. I also finally watched the 1997 cartoon miniseries a few months ago; it was better than I had expected. 

 

Most recently I decided to reread it via Mark Reads, mostly as background audio while I was at work. As a result, I didn't pay the best attention to it, because I'm not great at multi-tasking like that. But that's OK; that's precisely why my work audio choices include Mark reading books I've already read! 

 

Soul Music is part of the "Ankh-Morpork gets steampunkified" subset of Discworld books, in which a thing gets invented/discovered/released into the Discworld and then havoc ensues, and then probably nasty many-headed things invade from the Dungeon Dimensions. The book before this was Men at Arms, in which the thing that gets invented is a gun (or gonne, as the case may be), but Soul Music probably hews closer to the tradition of the fantastic Moving Pictures, because Pratchett has a lot of feelings about the chaotic potential of art, apparently. 

 

There are a couple of plotlines going on here, as usual. One is that Death, the anthropomorphic personification, is pulling a mini Reaper Man redux and abandoning his post, trying to go off and find some way to forget. Since this existential crisis is kicked off by the deaths of Ysabel and Mort, I do find it darkly amusing that Death is so bad at dealing with bereavement and, apparently, incapable of figuring out how to mourn (attempts include joining the Klatchian Foreign Legion and drinking copious amounts of alcohol). Death's job must then be temporarily taken over by his school-age granddaughter Susan, not yet grown up into the fantastic Susan of Hogfather but a very cool character all the same. 

 

Susan doesn't really like being Death; she doesn't have the acceptance of the randomness of the universe that it requires, and she is immediately plunged in over her head when a young musician who is supposed to die is sort of mysteriously saved at the last minute and, apparently, being kept alive by some force other than his own life force. 

 

The musician is Imp y Celyn, eventually stage-named Bud in homage to Buddy Holly, and also his plotline is largely a sort of weird spoof of the Day the Music Died. Not a lot of people could spoof rock's greatest tragedy and have it not be in incredibly poor taste, but Sir Terry Pratchett is not most people. Imp aka Bud is a musician whomst has set out to Ankh-Morpork to seek his fortune. When his new troll friend squashes his harp by sitting on it, Bud buys a magic guitar in one of those shops that just appeared yesterday and retroactively has been there forever, and he and his new friends start a band and invent Music With Rocks In.

 

Music With Rocks In soon takes Ankh-Morpork by storm, leading to lots of shenanigans, the Wizards acting like surly teenagers, and CMOT Dibbler becoming the band's manager and sending them on a rather dreadful tour while stealing most of their money. 

 

The bits of this book that have stuck with me over the years, even when I've gone ages without reading it, are always the wizards. The wizards get into Music With Rocks In hardcore. They do stuff like sew leather jackets and give themselves wear pompadour hairstyles with bacon grease and invent platform shoes and emblazon their clothes with studs that spell out BORN TO RUNE. In fact, even if the rest of this book sucked, it would be worth it just for the Dean and the jokes associated with his transformation into a fashion-forward wannabe rebel. 

 

Fortunately, the rest of the book does not suck, although neither is it one of the best Discworld books. But since a middling Discworld book is still much better than your average attempt at comic fantasy, that's OK. 

 

Oh, and the band name references are great. I probably missed most of them when I first read the book 17 or 18 years ago, but now I get a lot more of them.