Reading Discworld!

[Lemmy]

Soul Music

Finally finished "Soul Music". Took me a while because I had very little free time lately.

This book is somewhat difficult to judge, IMO. The Suzan side of the story is a bit underwhelming sometimes. On one hand, it's fascinating to see Death grieving and getting more insight on how he thinks and (tries to) understand humans (these little insights were by far my favorite parts of the story).

There's however some re-threading of old ground... And starting the book with Mort and Ysabella's death left a bitter taste in my mouth... Not to mention that their apparent attempt to distance themselves and their daughter from Death felt out-of-character to me... It'd have made more sense if it had happened one generation later... With Mort and Ysabel's daughter deciding to raise her own daughter away from Death after Mort and Ysabel's accident... But I suppose that would add at least another 16 years ans possibly age the rest of the cast too much.

The actual Soul Music part of the book is not quite as touching, of course, but it's more creative, IMO. Although it felt that the humor and parody were better than the actual story, except for the very end, when we learn the truth about "music with rock in it".

I can't say it's a bad book... Quite the opposite, actually. It's a great book, very well written, with endearing characters and great humor (the countless references to classic rock made me LOL more than a few times, from a guitar-maker named Gibson, to "Pathway to Paradise" to a "road-manager" troll named asphalt... And specially a bunch of geriatric wizards being so taken by rock n' roll that they start acting like rebellious teenagers, and of course, CMOT Dibbler is hilarious as always!). The climax of the story is really cool, with DEATH riding on a motorcycle, playing an "empty chord" on the guitar to end The Music... Which only a musician can re-start.

Even so, for some reason... The book wasn't as exciting or enticing as previous ones. I enjoyed every page, and always wantee to know how the story goes, but I never felt like I couldn't wait at all to see what happens next and had no choice but keep reading, like I did with previous books.

Perhaps I'm biased because I don't like the fates of the characters of one of my favorite books ("Mort"), which was the first Discworld book that had me enthralled... Perhaps it's because I read "Lords and Ladies" not long ago and that book REALLY caught my attention... Perhaps I just expected too much hype from the book because it's about rock n' roll...

Whatever the case, I can't dispute "Soul Music's" quality, it's a great book that I throughly enjoyed, after all, but it didn't strike the same chord as some of the previous books.

Well... In any case, next is "Interesting Times", IIRC... I have no idea what it's about, but I'm eager to find out!