I swear that one of the best things to ever happen to me was kindle books available through my library. It’s fantastic. I’ve been calling it library service for shut-ins, which is pretty much what I’d be if I could work from home and get groceries delivered.
One of the wonderful things available in my library’s kindle collection is the entire Discworld series. Starting last year, I’ve been working my way through all of the books, in order. I’m up to number 16, Soul Music.
One of Discworld’s strengths is that you can pick up any book in the series and enjoy the story in isolation. Some are stronger than others, and they are loosely connected–some more than others–but you aren’t missing anything vital. I am finding that reading the stories in order does enrich them. I also tend to read several books in between, and will sometimes find myself looking forward to picking up the series again. I think there will be an empty place in my life when I run out of new Discworld books to pick up.
Within Discworld’s catalog there are several subseries, each focusing on a different cast of characters and sometimes a different part of the world. Soul Music is the third of the Death-related books. I don’t know what it says about me, but when Death receives an anthropomorphic personification in almost any work, he (or she, or it) tends to be my favorite. Really, if I could have my pick of who could greet me when my time is done, I really wouldn’t mind if it were the Death of Discworld.
Rock and roll–or music with rocks in–has found its way to Discworld by way of a mysterious shop that appeared just across from the Unseen University. The music has possessed a young musician, and in a magic-saturated world that runs on the theory of narrative causality, the music and the story take on a life of their own.
We meet Susan Sto Helit, daughter of the child Death adopted and his former apprentice. She’s just learning about her grandfather and how inheritance isn’t all about genes. I don’t know if I’d have loved Susan as deeply as I do if I met her first as this teenager, but all in all, I can’t say she’s portrayed unfairly. Quoth, the raven, also makes his appearance, and the Death of Rats plays a part.
Some of the humor does feel forced, but humor is so person that I can’t say what I found forced won’t be natural or hilarious to someone else. For every joke that made me roll my eyes, there were also several that at least made me snort out loud or grin while I was reading. If I were handing someone a Discworld novel in order to convince them to read the rest of the series, I don’t know if this would be the one I’d hand over, but if it were the one they found, I also wouldn’t encourage them to drop it and try another instead.
What I love about the Discworld is that you have the story on the surface, and it’s often familiar and well-trod. We’ve seen it in real life, and we’ve seen it in our fiction. We know it, and we know how it will turn out. But there’s more at play here, including having to come to grips with being unable to ultimately change fate even when time and space mean nothing to you and you remember the past like it happened tomorrow. There’s learning to let go and learning when to refuse to accept the story fate has laid out before you.
The Everyday Alchemy Lab 