Small Gods

My favourite Terry Pratchett novel.

Mildly amusing, that's how I would describe the overall tone of this book. It is filled with small jokes and satires relating religion, politics and philosophy. The writing style is very clever, but I'm not much of a fan of the British “Monthy Python” sort of humor, or else this book would rate a 5 for me.

The story revolves around a monastery that represents the center of political and religious power in this region of the world. The monks worship the god Om, and they are very keen on judging other people. Anyone that does not conform with they're very rigorous view of the world is sent to the Quisition to be tortured and killed. Also, they tend to wage war on all other nations that does not follow the same religion as theirs.

The protagonist is a simple minded monk that has a perfect memory. One day, he starts hearing a voice, that turns out to be the god Om speaking to him. He soon finds out that he is the only one that can hear him, and that every other pious priest of his religion is an hypocrite that is more preoccupied with rituals, traditions, following the rules, not getting tortured and politics then with proper adoration of the god.

The dialog is very intelligent, there are many philosophical references as jokes are made about them as well. The characters are very likable, even the antagonist which is a fervent worshiper of himself, apparently. His only goal is to rise in the church hierarchy to impose his views on others. Among other things, he is against asking too many questions, reading books and any other activity that leads to critical thinking.

3.8

This book discusses, as the title says, gods. In a world where there are small gods and large gods, and even microscopic gods, the book uses wit and humor to deliver an interesting tale around the Great God Om, who has taken the form of a tortoise. Pratchett makes an interesting observation on gods and religion–why do humans need gods? Why do they believe in them? Why do gods, assuming they exist, need humans?

To me, this book asks questions, but doesn't necessarily push an anti-religion or even a pro-religion stance. The book is just making observations–Do people actually believe or do they go through the motions? Will people actually follow a god just based on a book and is that enough? Do religion books/prophets say things that are from God or do they use their position and power to push their own agenda?

I can see the connections between the Church of Om with the Catholic church, however, I really think it is meant to connect to any religion, especially any high-demand or old religion. I know I found many connections to the religion of my youth.

This book was great, but the story itself was a bit boring to me and things jumped around without really explaning things, which sometimes made it difficult to follow, but otherwise, fun, witty, and an interesting premise and look at religion and belief.


Quotes:
Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.

Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.

May as well tell you,' muttered Om. ‘It's not as though we're going to survive... See, every god's a Great God to someone.'

What lolling around all day while slaved do the real work? Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place while those fellows are living like—' ‘—gods?' asked Brutha.

“Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.”

“Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.”

Difficult reading at times—plodding, slow—but oh so worth it. Lovely work.

That's a good book.

I honestly didn't expect Prachett to make me cry. On the other hand, I didn't expect to love Brutha as a protagonist, but then again here we are.

This book is inherently about the relationship that we as humans have with gods and our faith. Why do we believe? And more profound: In what exactly should we put our faith?
And this part is tricky, because I would count myself as an atheist - but this question resonated with me, why's that?
Because faith doesn't start with gods, holy figures, prophets or commandments and most definitely doesn't end there.

For me at least. And hopefully for you too.

The world is ever changing, here or in Discworld, though history keeps repeating itself over and over again.
One would think: “What good can I do? Nothing matters.” And I get it. It's tiresome.
But I believe that this train of thought is only for the truly faithless - and where's the fun in that?

9/10

I spent 14 years in Catholic schools and studied Religion and Culture at university for 4 years. If I had to pick one book to explain western religion to someone who'd never heard of it, this is the book that I would use.

This was a much better starting point with Terry Pratchett for me than The Colour Of Magic. Very funny and a worthwhile read for any dabblers in theology or fantasy

4.50/5.00

This is one of the most creative books I have come across. With its numerous quotable lines, beautiful and highly efficient prose, and yes some good humor, small gods is an excellent read. It is also my first entry into Discworld.


SPOLIERS!

Story/Plot
I cannot imagine a creative, inventive story as this one. The idea of a story of a god having a redemption arc and learning to be a better god is endlessly fascinating. The ending where a sort of Magna Carta is created with a God, not a King is just brilliant.

Worldbuilding/Magic System
This is an easy one. The concept of the discworld, the astronomy, the powers of gods and small gods.. so many great examples. I will say that the focus of this book is not Worldbuilding, but the satire, the social commentary and messaging and the story. But small gods did a fantastic job of what it needed to do.

Character Dev
I just loved the Om character, just loved him. He is funny AF. I didn't quite resonate with Brutha as much as I did with Om, but I appreciated him and the wonderful representation of an Autistic character, and he goes through a brilliant story arc.

Dialogue/Prose
Efficient, amazing, quotable, witty, humorous! no need to explain. Here is my fav line -> “like an atheist in a thunderstorm” lol.

Emotional Impact
I enjoyed the book, I did. I read through the second half in one sitting and it was a page turner. But, I was hoping for more humor that what I got, and I think this genre is not my most favorite.. but certainly enjoyable.

This is an unusual Discworld book. I think it contains none of the large array of regular Discworld characters except Lu-Tze and Death, neither of whom have much to do in this story.

Like any other Pratchett book, it has some humorous dialogue and comments, but it's basically a serious book about religion. It explains how gods (at least, Discworld gods) are fueled by their believers: they come into existence when someone starts to believe, grow according to the number and fervour of their believers, and fade back almost to non-existence when no-one believes in them any more. It also explains how religions may be taken over by bureaucrats whose allegiance is to their church (their organization) rather than to their god or to ordinary believers.

I quite like this book, although I'm not religious and and found it no more than mildly enjoyable to read. It's readable and engaging, and whenever I needed to put it down for a while I was somewhat reluctant.

Quirky and humorous. This was a fairly fun read but not really my thing. At least I finished it and enjoyed most of it...I thought I might DNF it like I have Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy twice.

Executive Summary: Despite how long it took me to read this one, I rather enjoyed it, and thought the ending was particularly strong. Hopefully it won't be another 2 years before my next Discworld book.Full ReviewThe last year+ has been a struggle for me reading. It'd be easy to say it was all due to covid, but this was happening before that started too. I started this book 4 months ago. It's not a very large book. Even with how slow I read that's an incredibly long amount of time for it to take. The issue was less to do with how much I liked the book and more to do with how little I'm interested in reading lately.I thought Discworld's humor would maybe get me back into reading. I've heard several people list this as one their favorites of the series too. However it didn't really seem to do the trick.I felt like this one started slow but picked up steam as it went along. I read the last 2/3 of the book in the last two weeks. I've been a bit hit or miss with various sub-series. As a stand-alone I didn't really know what to expect. The only other I've read was [b:Pyramids 64217 Pyramids (Discworld, #7) Terry Pratchett https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1439098306l/64217.SY75.jpg 968512] and I didn't like that one nearly as much.I thought the commentary on organized religion both humorous and poignant. I'm not sure everyone would feel the same. Religion can be a touchy subject. I didn't feel like anything in this book was aimed at any particular religion, but rather those that use it for their own selfish purposes.Overall I'm glad I read this, but I wish it had gotten me back into reading more than it did. A large reason I finally finished it was another book I'm looking forward to comes out next week and I finally wanted to be done with it.I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the ending. I may need to reread this book at some point down the road when I'm in a better headspace for reading in general.

I can't get enough of the man. Some bits in the middle got a bit repetitive but once again he pulls it all together for an astonishing climax.

7/10

Probably the best Discworld book I've read till now, granted I've read only 6-7 but this ranks number one easily. It's always a tricky thing to write about religion and criticise it without being condescending and Pratchett manages it beautifully here.

I defy anyone to read this book and not love it. Go ahead. Try it. It will wipe away the smug little faces we present to the world and replace them with faces swept away in hearty guffaws.



A great book to read during the cold rainy days of last week.

Absurd. Plausible. Parody. Portrait.
In the vein of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, I really enjoyed this.