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Sixteenth volume in the Discworld series, Soul Music has been published in
1994 by Terry Pratchett.
Susan, a sixteen years old orphan is the adoptive granddaughter of Death. When
Death decides to quit its job and try to understand the concept of forgeting,
she inherits her grandfather's special abilities and feels compelled to replace
him. At the same time, Imp y Celyn, a musiciam from Llamedos, arrives in
Ankh-Morpork and meets Lias the troll and Glod the dwarf, musicians too. Since
Imp's harp gor broken, they go to a mysterious music shop and Imp buys a
mysterious guitar. Imp and his two new friends start playing in pubs for a
handfull of dollars, trying to avoid the representatives of the Guild of
Musicians who mercilessly track people who dare to play music without paying
the guild's outrageously high fee. The guitar has a kind of magical influence
on the band and makes them play a new kind of music that they describe as
Music with Rocks in. Susan is present at the concert since Imp is supposed
to die there, but for some reason, he doesn't. Later, Imp decides to change
his name to Buddy (Imp = bud, celyn = holly) and Lias changes his to Cliff.
They meet Dibbler, who becomes their manager and organises a concert tour to
Pseudopolis, Sto Lat and Quirm. In exchange, Buddy demands a free music
festival, because in his opinion, music should be free and people shouldn't
have to pay for it. Dibbler finally accepts, after estimating how many
sausages and other products he could sell the the audience, as well as with
music recording boxes invented by Ponder Stibbons. During the tour, Buddy
becomes more and more apathic, and it becomes clear that the guitar is playing
the man during the concerts rather than the other way round. At the end of
their concert they decide to flee on a cart, but they got an accident on the
road. Death appears again, having learned that he cannot learn how to forget,
and returns to his duty, explaining to Susan (who witnessed the accident) that
Buddy died already long time ago, but only music was keeping him going, which
broke the fabric of reality. With the accident, reality comes back and part of
what happened ceases to exist, replaced with another of the possible alternate
realities. Susan understands that Buddy/Imp is alive, somewhere, and she event
learns eventually where he probably is.