"Soul Music" also opens on a stormy night, when Death's daughter and her husband die in a fiery carriage crash. Her death nags at Death, leaving him wondering what the meaning of life is. And when Death vanishes, his young granddaughter Susan is summoned by the Death of Rats and a talking raven -- turns out she has the power to do Death's job. Meanwhile, a young aspiring bard, who renames himself Bud Y Celyn, leaves home for Ankh-Morpork, befriends a couple of other aspiring musicians, and ends up forming a rock band -- with a strange magical guitar that instantly turns him into a "music with rocks in" star.

But that powerful guitar is also messing up the normal death cycle, and is exerting a strange power over the people who hear it -- even the wizards of Unseen Academy are affected. And as Susan finds herself increasingly drawn to this tormented young musician, she finds that she may not be able to deal with the power of his guitar. But can Death himself do the job?

You can probably depend on anything written by or based on something by Terry Pratchett to be hilarious, well-written and deliciously unpredictable. "Wyrd Sisters" and "Soul Music" are no exception -- both are quite faithful to the original novels by Pratchett, and are crammed with tiny homages and well-loved characters, such as Nobby Nobbs, Ridcully, the Death of Rats, the Librarian, and many others.

And both stories take awhile to unfold, letting events gradually build up to a stunning climax, and weaving intricate storylines with lots and lots of supporting characters. At the same time, he interweaves a lot of deeper questions into his storylines about love, death and minding your own business. And Pratchett doesn't skimp on dramatic, intense scenes, such as Susan seeing what happened between her parents and her grandfather long ago, and the tragic results.

All this, and we get to see Nanny Ogg sing the song about how the hedgehog can never be "whassnamed" at all. Yeah, there's a lot of deliciously warped humor -- a ghost misplacing his head, Granny's undignified flight around the kingdom, the witches summoning a demon, Death's searches for meaning ("I've seen the infinite... it's nothing special"), and Granny's inability to grasp that the theatre is all pretend ("It's been a long time since I've seen a theatre played properly!").

Here's a warning -- the animation is quite rough and lacking in dimension. Some of the characters are kind of goofy-looking, particularly the wizards, but it's not the worst I've