Soul Music

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Having now worked out how to successfully navigate as well as take in the scenery of the Discworld and the writings of Terry Pratchett, I decided this week to continue on with stories featuring the character of Death. Mort was the 4^th novel in the Discworld series, and this week I flashed forward to the 16^th: Soul Music.

Soul Music tells the story of young Susan whose eccentricities and ability to be seemingly invisible suddenly make sense when she discovers that she is Death’s granddaughter. Death has disappeared and Susan has been called to take up the family Duty. At first she is not too thrilled about this, but she becomes even more distressed by it as a strange and contagious new style of music starts sweeping across the Discworld: Music With Rocks In. The music is alive, it changes and devours people, and when it threatens to take someone whose life Susan believes to be important, an epic battle of the bands takes place between the finite and the infinite.

The brilliance of fantasy is that it’s allegorical and can therefore be a metaphor for just about anything. While a lot of writers like to use it to tackle deep and socially important themes like war, racial discrimination, politics and whatnot, Terry Pratchett is one of the few (certainly the only that I’ve read) authors who use the genre as a multitool to write about absolutely everything!

In Moving Pictures (the 10^th book in the series) Pratchett explores/takes the piss out of the phenomena of cinema, in particular Hollywood and the Golden age of Tinsel Town. In Soul Music, it’s an exploration into rock ’n’ roll and everything associated with it: creation, expression, and rebellion. While the narrative is written in that crisp and witty Pratchett style, there is a definite darkness that the story explores, manifesting in the changes that many characters go through when exposed to the music.

The book captures that ‘dark side of rock ‘n’ roll’ that we’ve all come to know, but blends it perfectly into the weird and wacky Discworld, using a lot of pop culture and iconic musical references e.g. ‘the Day the Music Died’, James Dean, and the Blues Brothers.

Image credit: the Long Earth Wiki Fandom

We’re introduced to some new and memorable characters, as well as delighted by visits from old faces including Albert, Cut-My-Own-Throat Dibbler, and of course, Death.

Soul Music is a wonderfully wacky story filled with everything from adventure to alcoholic poisoning. There’s even a point of heartbreak tucked away in there! It’s a true Pratchett classic!

Author: Terry Pratchett, 1994

Published: Original published in 1994 by Victor Gollancz Ltd, Great Britain. Corgi edition published by Transworld Publishers Ltd, 1995.