In a quest to escape the reality of 2020 and recapture my youth, I’ve set myself the goal of reading all 41 Discworld novels in one year. Join me on this voyage of discovery which definitely isn’t a complete waste of time. Mild spoilers, probably.
I kinda hate this book. It was bound to happen eventually. Taking on 41 novels, you can’t believe they’re all going to be great. You hope they’re all decent but even that is a lot to ask. Hate, feel like a statistical certainty at some point. But, let me start at the beginning, what is the premise of Soul Music.
Susan Sto Helit, orphan of Mort and Ysabell, and adoptive granddaughter of Death has to take up the duty of ushering souls to the next world when Death takes a break to explore the idea of how to forget. At the same time, musicians Buddy, Cliff and Glod stumble across a magical guitar and form The Band With Rocks In, and lo, rock music ( Music With Rock In) is created on the Disc. Cue, Beatlemania and the untimely death of great musicians.
“It’s more the kind of hate you might have for Coldplay or Ed Sheeran. The hatred of the dull, unengaging and innocuous.”
Let me explain the type of hate I have for this book. It isn’t the active hate one might feel The Crazy Frog or The Chicken Song, its nature isn’t offensive by design. It’s more the kind of hate you might have for Coldplay or Ed Sheeran. The hatred of the dull, unengaging and innocuous. Which is kinda bad give it’s a story about rock ‘n roll.
Its first problem the beat. Soul Music has a bad structure and doesn’t know what it’s supposed to say. There are about six or seven plots, struggling to breathe in the book without any single plot saying something worthwhile. The two stories with some initial traction are Susan’s and Buddy’s but, they get drowned out in the latter half of the book while Pratchett flits around that by the time they get to their conclusions, you don’t care and it doesn’t feel deserved.
The second problem is the tune. Soul Music doesn’t have much to say, certainly nothing new. Unlike the previous books, where I’ve wanted my initial response to belonging purely to me, I actually read up on the book after finishing it. There was no great revelation beyond one or two references I spotted but couldn’t identify. I was largely familiar with the Roundworld allusions but so what? Soul Music didn’t really satirise rock music, it just pointed out it was aware of it. Sadly, it lacks soul.
“…the essence of rock is everything this novel isn’t. Defiant, disrupted, distorted.”
And it’s not like I’m particularly precious about the nature of rock music. I enjoyed it a lot, particularly when I was younger and had more time to explore new music, and I believe the essence of rock is everything this novel isn’t. Defiant, disrupted, distorted. But it’s also ridiculous. Like a lot of people, I share the incredibly bland opinion This Is Spinal Tap is a masterpiece. This just feels like a wasted opportunity that feels a little paint by numbers, like Pratchett picked a subject, maybe one he was too scared to really go after, listed a few tracks he wanted to play and cobbled the setlist together without thinking about the full performance.
I wish there was more to say about it, but my ambivalence towards the text didn’t spark any nostalgia, rebelliousness or introspection. The closest I got was thinking A) it’s interesting how passionate we can feel regarding our opinions on creative forms and B) some times rock is best left to the young, lest it mutates in the always lamentable work eventually named “classic rock”.
Next up is Interesting Times, which feels a bit like a piss-take given, well, everything.
