Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

Sci Fi and Fantasy books everyone should Read - Small Gods: A Discworld Novel

Reviews
 

`Small Gods' is a standalone Discworld book has always been one of my favourite book from the series and it is probably the one I have read the most after `Soul Music'. The book follows Brutha, a novice in the church of Om, who meeting with his god leads him on a path that could shake up his religion and his god.

Although this book is probably a bit overlong but it is still very entertaining and very funny. The book is extremely well written, as you would expect from one of Terry Pratchett's books and has, in my view, some of the best character development from any single Discworld books. The characters are good and this book also does a good job of expanding on the nature and life cycle of the Discworld gods. This book also introduces the Omnian faith into the Discworld setting, something which is referenced quite a bit in the later books.

Although this book has slipped down my favourite Discworld books list, I would still say that it is in the top ten and well worth five stars.
T. R. Alexander

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You buy Practchett becuase you love his style and comic genius - this doesn't disappoint.
J. Alford

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I re-read this the other day and when I opened it I couldn't believe that I read it SEVENTEEN YEARS ago! Has it really been that long? This must have been the 2nd or 3rd discworld book I read and it's still one of the best. There are rarely discworld books these days which stray too far from established characters and places but back in the day Terry would knock out a brand new slice of discworld like this which expand the world to new horizons.

Brutha is a monk, well...not even that really. He is a novice who has never progressed further and seemingly never will. He lives in Omnia, a citadel religious state where the people worship Om. One day a tortoise starts to speak to him.
The tortoise is God.
Yep, you're already hooked aren't you?

And from there we have the usual Discworld jokes, put-downs, philosophy and damn good story telling. There is a difference to this book though, it was really the first which seemed to really be saying something serious about a subject. Yes, God is a tortoise, philosophers run around wet and naked and someone is trying to sell things onna stick. But, there's an underlying darkness to the plot which deals with subjects such as blind faith, belief versus reason and religion as an institution. Like I say though, an undercurrent...it's a book which will make you laugh until you spasm. (although the darkness gives Death an opportunity to shine)

Sir Bob

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When Brother Brutha of the Omnian Church starts talking to a tortoise, he merely assumes that he has gone mad. However, when the tortoise turns out to be the great god Om who is having a Bad Day, Brutha finds that his faith is about to be put to the test...

Up to (and including) Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett was an author who wrote books that broadly fell in two categories: books that spoofed or were a satire of modern society in some way, often through broad comedy, and other books that were a bit more serious and had a point to them, though still amusing. The two sides had come very close to coexisting in Pyramids, but arguably just managed to avoid fusing into one impressive whole.

Small Gods is where Pratchett got it right. The entire book, from its first page to its last, is a lengthy, sustained and inordinately clever examination of religion, fundamentalism and blind faith and their conflict with reason, argument and science. And you barely notice, because the story itself is extremely taut, well-told and brilliantly characterised with Pratchett's occasional bursts of silliness kept to a minimum in favour of flashes of wry and at times angry humour. Small Gods is a book that Richard Dawkins would kill to have written, and done so in such a manner that even the most God-bothering evangelical would have still been riveted to it.

Small Gods has the veneer of being just a traditional Pratchett book: there's some jokes about men in togas arguing pointlessly about philosophy (in a world where it is difficult to have a conversation about, "Are the gods real?" when a lightning bolt will come flying through the window five seconds later with a label attached saying, "YES,"), Death has a couple of cameo appearances and there is a running joke about tortoises being nice to eat. But you can tell the subject matter really got Pratchett riled up. His hatred of blind faith and the idea that killing people is okay because some book says so - and, let's face it, that book was written by a old guy who might have been bitten by a donkey that morning and was a really foul mood when he started on the bit about doing unto others with fire and brimstone and was probably not, when you get down to it, an actual deity - really comes through in this novel, but in measured tones.

Character-wise, Small Gods may be Pratchett's strongest book. Most of the cast does not reoccur in the series (Death and a very brief trans-temporal appearance by a certain simian book-collector aside), but Pratchett still has time to paint them in impressive detail. Vorbis may be one of the scariest 'villains' (if that's even a right description) in the whole series. Brutha is certainly one of its most interesting protagonists. Om's pragmatic, tortoise-meets-deity outlook on life is amusing. Even minor characters like Didactylos and would-be rebel leader Simony are well-rounded and given good rationales for what they do.

Almost as importantly, the ending does not suck. Pratchett has a patchy record with endings, with his books sometimes ending okay and others being a bit of a let-down after a strong start and middle section. Small Gods, however, has a fantastic ending, starting with possibly the biggest belly-laugh out of all thirty-odd books in the series (hint: it involves something being airborne which shouldn't be) and proceeding from there.

Intelligent but never preachy, philosophical but never boring, Small Gods (*****) is Terry Pratchett's masterpiece (okay, his strongest masterpiece). It is the strongest Discworld novel and almost certainly the best thing he has ever written.
A. Whitehead

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This is quite easily the best novel by Terry Pratchett that I have read. There are plenty of excellent gags about religion and philosophy as well as a top-notch plot. The naive and clumsy hero, Brutha, is a novice in the citadel of Omnia. The repellent villain is the vicious religious bigot, Vorbis and the supporting cast includes the great god Om, who is trapped in the body of a small one-eyed tortoise. What is genuinely thought-provoking is the description of an intolerant monotheistic society in which religious belief has been replaced by ritual. In Disc World there are billions of potential gods who require human belief in order to thrive. Om has only one true believer, Brutha, and so cannot change into any form that is more impressive. And, as Om observes, Brutha is not the chosen one that he would have chosen.
Brutha's photographic memory proves useful to Vorbis's twisted plans for defeating the liberal state of Ephebe, which is a loose cipher for classical Athens. There is much fun derived from the sub plots about the philosophers, religions, technology and politics in Ephebe. This is followed by an extended passage when Brutha returns to the Citadel across a desert, saving Vorbis on the way. On their return Vorbis fulfils his destiny in becoming the next prophet, and Om regains his power, but it is Brutha who triumphs, having absorbed the knowledge of Ephebe and applied it with humanity and common-sense.
There are no wizards here and no Ankh-Morpork, just a funny and deeply serious novel.

Mr. Mark J. Errington

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