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Soul Music

Soul Music

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not the best, but still good
Review: This isn't my favorite of the Discworld series, but it's still a solid read, and a very funny take on the world of rock and roll. (Or rather, the world of Rocks that Roll.) Another in the Death series, not quite as wonderful as "Reaper Man," but worth a look if you're a fan. Or even if you aren't; because, let's face it, Pratchett is still a cut above the rest, even in his more minor efforts.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not the best, but still good
Review: This isn't my favorite of the Discworl series, but it's still a solid read, and a very funny take on the world of rock and roll. (Or rather, the world of Rocks that Roll.) Another in the Death series, not quite as wonderful as "Reaper Man," but worth a look if you're a fan. Or even if you aren't; because, let's face it, Pratchett is still a cut above the rest, even in his more minor efforts.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Death, Rock and Roll, What more do you want in a book?
Review: An amazing Terry Pratchette, for the older reader whose read a few other of his books, but not advised for the frist time reader. Not because it isn't wonderful, it is, and not becuase it isn't funny, it is, but becuase it relays heavily on other perviouse novels for a lot of it's humor. This was the frist book of the Discworld series, I'd read, and I liked it. But after reading a dozen other Discworld books, and re-reading Soul Music, I laughed my head off.

If your looking for a good frist time book though, try Mort, The Color of Magic, or Reaper Man.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A true waste of wood pulp.
Review: How this got printed I don't want to know.

I will read anything, from milk cartons to Richard Feynmane to bodice rippers. I could not get through this drivel.

And what, pray tell, is with a character that always speaks in CAPITAL LETTERS.

Don't go here, unless you are in desparate for the paradigmatic example of <profanity ommitted in deference to common decency>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I Know, It's Only Rock N Roll
Review: No one agrees on which is the best Terry Pratchett novel, but a lot of his fans, myself included, would name this as a candidate. In this novel, he takes his manic punning, wordplay and double- and triple-entendre to the highest level.

Soul Music has three narrative threads: Death takes a holiday (which Pratchett fans will remember from _Mort_), Mort's orphan daughter, Susan Sto Helit, and her attempts to cope with the family legacy, and the discovery of rock and roll on the disc. The three stories intertwine and the result, for me, ranged from snickers to guffaws.

The big news is that rock and roll comes to the disk, through the agency of a pawnshop guitar and a skilled harpist, whose name translates as "Bud of Holly" and who looks kind of Elvis[h]. With a dwarvish horn player named Glod and a trollish drummer named Cliff, the band Music with Rocks In takes the Discworld by storm. The Librarian, the monk... orangutan who runs the Wizard's library, sits in on keyboards, and exceeds even the excesses of Jerry Lee Lewis. You cannot imagine a rock music issue that Pterry doesn't reach. Women fans pitch articles of clothing; espresso shops appear; rock promoters - C.M.O.T. Dibbler, of course - arrive; even the sedate wizards wear leather, do their best James Dean and show they, too, are "Born to Rune."

Parts of the book are a pastiche of "Blues Brothers" ("We're on a mission from Glod"), "Spinal Tap," and "Woodstock." Other parts are simply Pratchett's own mad invention. And this book also features Pterry's best pun - "some felonious monk;" possibly the best pun in literature since Niven's and Gerrold's _The Flying Sorcerors_. You can spend a lot of time just working out the puns. And let me note that Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" gets the treatment it righteously deserves.

But while Buddy and his band tour with their roadie Asphalt and inescapably head towards Dead Man's Curve, and while Death does his best to learn how to forget with the help of the Klatchian Foreign Legion and alcohol, Susan makes increasingly frantic efforts to keep what passes for reality on the Discworld from coming completely unstuck. With the help of the Death of Rats, Albert and other favorites, the Disc is saved, but not without some uncommon poignancy.

There are scholarly articles on whether Pratchett writes parody or satire. However labelled, this was the high water mark for his experiments with the pure form. Anglo-American literature has never had as brilliant a satirist/parodist as Terry Pratchett. He may have written better Discworld books, but I'm not sure he has written a funnier book. Especially if you know and like rock music.

"Bee There Orr Bee A Rectangular Thyng"

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: satiric or just plain silly?
Review: This is my first venture into realms of Terry Pratchett and his Discworld. And, well, I'm not sure what to think. Explaining the plot is also difficult because, well, any plot about a band where the pianist is a orangutan (..a librarian by profession!) and the Grim Reaper joins the Foreign Legion leads one to believe that the novel Soul Music and the term 'plot' are mutually exclusive. No one will ever confuse this book as being an example of literature.

It seems that Terry Pratchett has written lots of silly jokes and satiric observations, some of which are quite funny, loosely tied into a very absurd story. Either you'll love it or hate it. I'm perhaps the exception where I think the likes of Terry Pratchett are best served as a humour columnist (satirist) for a newspaper, for example, rather than as a novelist. Soul Music does drag on. It's sort of like listening to the class clown in grade school; in small doses it's great, but after a while .. SHUT UP!!

Perhaps Soul Music is the best way for you to decide on whether you think Terry Pratchett is a god or a man with a misplaced talent.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Music with Rocks In
Review: Soul Music is absolutely my favourite book of all time. There's not much more needed to say about it. Terry Pratchett outdid himself writing this one -- it's even better than Maskerade (my second favourite book of all time). Soul Music is brilliant, witty, clever, splendidly written, and fantastically funny, yet despite the hilarious humour, it manages to have a certain poignance, too. I read Soul Music in one sitting -- took me two and a half hours -- without moving, save to turn the pages. I was completely unaware of time passing. After I finished it -- I turned to the front and read it again. In one more sitting. Five hours, total. I had expected this book to be brilliant and hysterical -- I was not disappointed. It was much, much better than I expected. Terry Pratchett is a genius, and Soul Music is his greatest.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Close to the bottom...
Review: As a humor writer and as a novelist, Terry Pratchett has his ups and downs, with ERIC being the most complete failure among his 20-odd novels. SOUL MUSIC is not at the bottom, but it is not far above. Generally, any Pratchett novel featuring the character Death is disappointing, but this one has major problems with ALL its characters, none of whom ever come to life even for a moment. There is really no plot, no characterization, no meaningful action, and at the end there's a non-ending perilously close to "why, it was all a dream."

Each of Pratchett's novels takes on a specific feature of our own world, and the closer the feature is to mass media, the worse the novel is. MOVING PICTURES (about the film industry) was bad, SOUL MUSIC (about the popular music industry) is even worse. The satire has little bite and almost no point, as if Pratchett were so offended by these media (as am I for that matter) that he can hardly bear to dissect them effectively.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Soul Music Review
Review: This is another great book from Terry Pratchett, that will give you a good laugh. However, I don't think the description of the book (Sex, Dwarves, and Rocks that Roll) tells you much about the book, so read it and find out for yourself!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sex, Dwarves, And Rocks That Roll!
Review: This is another great Discworld novel. It's about the birth of Music With Rocks In on the Disc. I just finished it, and was left with a very profound feeling that, somehow, I'm quite NORMAL next to this guy.

Anyway, it's about the granddaughter of Death, who has gone on a philisophical journey. Susan Sto Helit climbs aboard Binky (Death's white horse) and kills a lot of folk-until she meets Imp y Celyn. Imp, whose full, translated name is "small shoot of the holly" is the birth of Music with Rocks In on the Discworld. With a new name ("Buddy"), he and Glod the Dwarf ("We're on a mission from Glod") and Cliff the Troll start a band called The Band With Rocks In, and get the entire faculty of Unseen University in an uproar, even the Librarian ("Oook.") What follows is, well, hilarity. Read this, then go read Small Gods, and you'll be hooked for live on Discworld.


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