Pratchett, Terry: (16) Soul Music

Back to the Discworld re-read with a book that didn’t have its own entry yet: Soul Music. I’d remembered this one as not working very well for me because it’s a very specific parody of something I don’t have strong feelings about, early rock & roll.

This may be why it seems to have no momentum whatsoever to me. It also seems to be lacking a protagonist: Buddy is a blank, there’s not enough Susan, and Death buggers off for most of it. But, basically, I can’t make myself care except anything except trying to figure out when Susan was orphaned (the way the book describes it is very nonspecific; people on the Internet seem to have concluded that it was right before the plot starts, but it doesn’t feel like that to me, though it might be I was reading inattentively because of my overall failure to give a damn).

I think the most telling thing I can say is that I read this in the last three months and in that short time I’ve already forgotten how the plot resolves. It has minimal impact on later Discworld continuity, so unless early rock & roll is your thing, I’d say it’s very skippable.

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