BOOK REVIEW: Soul Music
Imagine a flat world that lies on top of four enormous elephants, all of which are perched upon a giant turtle; a world where Death tries ridiculously hard to understand the human lives he takes; where your life is no more than sand in an hourglass; and where music can steal your soul and make your life its own. Welcome to Terry Pratchett’s riotous Discworld.
In “Soul Music,” young Susan Sto Helit is thrown into a completely new adventure when she has to take over her grandfather, Death’s, job since Death has disappeared to get drunk and join the forgetful Klatchian Foreign Legion. As Susan goes about taking people’s souls and taking them away from mortality, she finds that she has her hands full when a young man named Imp y Celyn from Llamedos buys an ancient guitar. Susan watches in awe as Imp’s hourglass runs out of sand and is replaced by music. Susan is in much too far over her head, the Death of Rats doesn’t have a translator, and Grim Reaper is nowhere to be found.
The great city of Ankh-Morpork (the setting for the story) hosts a wide variety of Guilds. There’s the Assassins’ Guild, the Fools’ Guild, the Thieves’ Guild, the Music Guild, and many others. It is all a form of organized crime which, in the patrician’s conceptual view, works remarkably well. You can’t kill anyone without registering with the Assassins’ Guild; you can’t be a clown without joining with the Fools’ Guild. And the Guild of Musicians, well…in the immortal words of the Watch Guard Nobby, “Very hot on licenses, the Guild of Musicians. They catch you playing without a license, they take your instrument and they shove…let’s just say it’s not much fun if you’re a piccolo player.” (see page 21)
Unfortunately, the young imp does not have a license, and so the Guild of Musicians is out to capture him, while in the meantime the wizards at the Unseen University are attempting to interpret the phenomenon called “Music With Rocks In,” the Discworld version of rock and roll. No one suspects that the guitar has taken control of Imp’s life, until Death comes back from his expedition and plays the guitar. As soon as Death touches the strings, the music starts to die, which in turn begins to kill Imp, which makes the Guild of Musicians happy but makes Susan rather upset since she has begun to like Imp quite a bit. It is now up to Imp to save himself, his friends, and all of music.
Soul Music is full of humor, fascinating philosophies, and excellent characters. The plot is rewardingly abstract, superbly detailed, and well thought out. Terry Pratchett’s writing style is refreshing and well needed in such tense times. You will not be disappointed if you pick up Soul Music and delve into the story Pratchett paints for you.