While not my favorite of the "Death" series of Discworld novels, this one still has lots of wildly entertaining moments. [As with most of the Discworld books this one can stand alone, but I'd recommend reading Mort first to set up the background.]

There are two main storylines here: in one, a young bard wishes to be the greatest musician in the world, and *something* hears him; soon he's in Ankh-Morpork, where he joins up with a dwarf and a troll to form a "music with rocks in" band, and when they play, the music really does take control.

The second storyline has to do with Death confronting a very personal loss and trying to do something he's never even considered before - he's trying to forget. His search takes him to the remote mountain homes of solitary wisemen, to the Klatchian Foreign Legion [which, of course, everyone joins in order to forget *something*], to the bottle, and onwards - and while he's abandoned his professional duties, granddaughter Susan is - much against her will - drafted as his replacement. She immediately decides she can do a much fairer job, especially when she sees that a handsome young bard is slated to die...

Lots of pop-culture jokes here as the band migrates through several generations of musical styles; there's also the neat blend of humor and poignance that usually accompany Death and his doings. Since much of the action takes place in Ankh-Morpork, there are appearances by members of the Watch and by the Patrician; the wizards of Unseen University have a moderately large (and quite funny) role too.

[Side note: there's a decent animated mini-series version of "Soul Music" available on VHS/DVD; respectable performances (including Christopher Lee as Death - perfect!), and a really fabulous intro showing Great A'Tuin, with elephants and Disc, swimming by in the depths of space...]

Released on Wednesday, March 12, 2003 at Annie's Book Stop, 112 DW Highway in Nashua, New Hampshire USA.

I've been buying a lot of books at Annie's specifically for BC, and I did find a BC book there once, so I thought I'd trade in a registered book or two; they won't be free, but the prices for secondhand paperbacks are pretty low, and if you bring in books of your own you can swap them for store credit, which you can use for up to half the cost of the books you buy. Now if I can just get out of the store with fewer books than I bring in...

I stopped by the store (why else? to pick up more books), and saw this on the SF shelf; I've been in since I released it and hadn't seen it before, so it may have been put out just recently.

I purchased this book at Annie's Book Stop along with a few others to swap with other SF readers. I'm not a fan of Terry Pratchett and don't intend to read this book, just pass it on.

Mailed book to trader at www.sf-books.com.

I got this book last week, but my family has had so much bad stuff happen to us that the book got put on the back burner. Now that I have my head sort of together, I can log this in and read it soon and make a journal entry.