They’re playing music they’ve never even dared to dream of. Thanks to the presence of Imp’s new guitar, something seems to be working through them – something that comes from an instinctive, urgent, addictive place that none of them ever imagined could exist.

The three chums decide to play a discreet series of gigs in the hope of raising money for their Guild membership, but nothing goes quite to plan. While failing to enrol at the Musicians’ Guild, he meets two fellow wannabes: the horn-playing dwarf Glod, and the rock-thumping troll Lias. And, when Imp (whose name roughly translates as ‘Small Bud of the Holly’) arrives in Ankh-Morpork, he finds himself fetching up in a strange old music shop, where he meets his destiny in the form of a very special guitar. Making vows like this is dangerous on the Discworld, because there’s always the danger something is watching and waiting for just such an opportunity to arise. Our hero is Imp y Celyn, a young bard from the rainy kingdom of Llamedos who dedicates his life to music in the midst of an argument with his intransigent father. Pratchett uses other books to riff on the arts – filmmaking ( Moving Pictures) and opera ( Maskerade), for example – but this homage to rock music affectionately skewers its pretensions, while maintaining a sense of the deep, raw, primal magic beneath it.

This has always been one of my favourite Discworld books and, at this point in the reread, I think it’s categorically the favourite.

Soul Music by Terry Pratchett