Plot summary: Rock 'n' Roll Music With Rocks In, aka The Music, has come to the Discworld. Meanwhile, Death has gotten depressed and is attempting to forget that he's Death, which causes the post of Death to default to the most suited available candidate. In this case, that means his teenage granddaughter Susan, who is not amused. And also |totally doesn't have a crush on the guy who accidentally created Music With Rocks In|.
In other words, a story about sex, drugs, and rock & roll. But actually just the third one of those. I'm pretty sure the book is absolutely filled with classic rock references I'm not getting.
This book has provided me with one of the most hilariously metal images of my entire life: Death, wearing a leather trenchcoat, riding a flaming ghost motorcycle at breakneck speed. If I ever become a musician I want that as my album cover. (Also, it's a subtle "American Pie" reference: in a coat he borrowed from the Dean. And this all happens on |the day The Music died|.)
This is apparently the book that introduces Susan Sto Helit / Susan Death, and the final book in my collection of the Death subseries. Well, for a given value of "collection"; I don't actually own all of them (or any of them), but now I've read them all.
Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for crude humor and swearing, probably.
Favorite lines:
Susan read the name etched on the glass.
"Volf Volfssonssonssonsson?"
Page 107.
Constable Detritus, Ankh-Morpork City Watch, was guarding the Opera House. It was an approach to policing that he'd picked up from Sergeant Colon. When you were all by yourself in the middle of a rainy night, go and guard something big with handy overhanging eaves. Colon had pursued this policy for years, as a result of which no major landmark had ever been stolen.*
*Well, except for the Unseen University once, but that was just a student prank.
Page 133.
"...Your trouble, Archchancellor, is that you don't understand people of our age!"
"What... you mean seven months older than me?" said Ridcully.
Page 177.
"What do you think of this one?"
Hammerjug cleared his throat.
"I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf,
"And me an' my friends can walk towards you with our hats on backwards in a menacing way,
"Yo!"
Page 216.
Appearances of Death count: 17.
(Endnote: There's a British rock band named The Who, which makes it somewhat hilarious when the supporting Music With Rocks In band [that keeps getting renamed] names itself The Whom.)
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