Small Gods

by Terry Pratchett

Other authorsJosh Kirby (Cover artist)
Hardcover, 1992

Status

Available

Call number

PR6066.R34 S63

Publication

Victor Gollancz (London, 1992). 1st edition, 1st printing. 288 pages. £14.99.

Description

Brutha, a simple man leading a quiet life tending his garden, finds his life irrevocably changed when his god, speaking to him through a tortoise, sends him on a mission of peace.

Media reviews

The problem with Small Gods is that its plot is complicated without being especially deft, and many tiny scenes exist solely to move stage scenery. Since a fair number of Pratchett's jokes recur from one book to the next, and many of the jokes in this novel are of the running or repeating variety
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(virtually every character, seeing Om as a tortoise, remarks, "There's good eating on one of those things"), the reader can end up looking for the good lines, like a partygoer digging through a dish of peanuts for the odd cashew.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member Eat_Read_Knit
The great god Om has come down in the world. A long way down. In fact, so far down that he his little legs have considerable trouble with stairs and ditches. In short, he is a tortoise. The only person who believes in him is the novice Brutha, and Brutha rather just wants to be left in peace to
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tend his melons and work on avoiding the inquisition. But both Om and the inquisition have other ideas. Om wants his believers back, and as for the inquisition, well, you just can't let people get away with saying the world is spherical.

Terry Pratchett's satire on religion is not only very entertaining but also has a lot to say about the ways in which religious belief can become corrupted.
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LibraryThing member mashcan
This is probably my favorite Pratchett book. Religious philosophy mixed with satire and always funny. Pratchett sees the darknesses in the world and is not frightened by them. The foibles of man comfort him and he comforts us with his stories about it.

This is a discworld novel, but it is a one-off
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and you don't have to have read anything else to read it.
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LibraryThing member Zathras86
Possibly the best of the Discworld novels; I say possibly since I haven't actually read them all yet. But it's not everyday that you find a book that forces you to care about the characters and think about the philosophical implications of the plot at the same time that you're rolling around on the
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floor in tears of laughter. I find that humorous books don't usually stand up well to multiple readings, but this one certainly does.

If you only read one Pratchett novel ever, read this one. The world at large tends to agree that it's the best introduction to the series, because it's hilariously funny but doesn't rely on characters or plot points introduced in previous books.
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LibraryThing member Artur
This book should be required reading for anyone who has profoundly held religious beliefs. Pratchett effectively, and with pointed humor, parodies institutionalized religion from many angles, but still allows that sincere and simple belief exists within it. One of Pratchett's best, and that's up
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against some serious competition.
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LibraryThing member veevoxvoom
In Omnia, everybody worships the great god Om, immortalized in temple art as a virile bull. So it comes as a surprise then, to simple-minded temple acolyte Brutha, when a tortoise speaks to him claiming to be Om. Turns out Om has been trapped in the body of a tortoise for the last few years and
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Brutha is the only person who can hear him. Before long Om and Brutha are sent on a mission to Ephebe as the Omnian Empire tries to expand, and new gods battle with the old.

I think this is one of my favourite Discworld novels. It’s one of the few that isn’t set in Ankh-Morpork, though Ankh-Morpork does feature in it a bit, but most of it takes place in Omnia and Ephebe, a city-state of philosophers modeled after Ancient Athens. Very few familiar characters appear, but what the book does is hilariously satirize organized religion. Pratchett pokes fun at religious doctrine and politics, contrasting them to simple, good-hearted Brutha. Brutha represents the best of the human spirit and his portrayal, especially as he matured, was incredibly tender. Small Gods also poses the question of where gods come from and why religion exists.

A fun, smart, warm book. I cheered for Brutha and Om the entire way through.
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LibraryThing member JoS.Wun
After reading this, you may find it hard not to laugh when you hear people of different religious persuasions, on this world, arguing about their beliefs. My advice though, would be not to laugh, they probably haven't read Small Gods
LibraryThing member Smiler69
Brutha is a novice who works in the garden and is happy to provide melons for the monks who work at the temple, and is also happy enough to stay away from Vorbis, the head Inquisitor and his followers, until the day he somehow comes into Vorbis's notice. He has no idea how this can be and is sure
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he's in for terrible torture and a very painful death. He doesn't know how to read or write, so what else could Vorbis want with him? But it so happens Brutha has an incredible memory and can't forget a thing, and Vorbis does indeed intend to make good use of him for political purposes. Meanwhile, the Great God Om has appeared to Brutha in the garden in the form of a small turtle who seems to be able to speak only to Brutha, for nobody else can hear him. But how is this possible? Om the Great, Om the Almighty, in whose name Vorbis and the Quisition have been taking countless lives... in the form of a basically powerless turtle?!

My fist journey into Terry Pratchett's Discworld is a great parody on certain forms of organised religion, the Inquisition and religious wars, and made for a terribly enjoyable read. I'm not sure all the Discworld books will be to my liking, but it certainly makes me want to discover others and I'll definitely want to return to this one— adding it to my pile of favourites of the year!
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LibraryThing member jguy7500
This is my favourite Discworld novel. It's a stand-alone book. The location and characters are (mostly) unique to this one book. Lu-Tze would be the exception, but he's mostly a minor character although he does have a few crucial action in the plot.

It's my favourite book because of it's mix of
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religion, philosophy and history, all tied up in Terry Pratchetts fantastically entertaining writing style. Its underlying message seems to be that people create their own image of god and worship that image. Then if/when they meet the real god, it comes as a shock. And also, that religion can so easily be corrupted in the quest for power - all messages that are very relevant today.

Great book, great themes, great writing.
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LibraryThing member jayne_charles
Definitely not one of my favourites of the series. I lost the plot astonishingly early, and whilst there was clearly a big message coming our way about religion, I missed it.
LibraryThing member dandelionroots
Gods can only exist when people believe in them, not merely fear their earthly administration - AKA The Church. In order to survive the millennia, a god must improve the lives of his subjects - or perish in the desert. It only takes one man to alter the course of history – towards community or
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war. The build-up was a bit tedious, but Pratchett’s satire/observations are delightful.

His prose is rather stellar at times:

Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time...

But how much worse to have been a god, and to now be no more than a smoky bundle of memories, blown back and forth across the sand made from the crumbled stones of your temples...

Ordinary madness he could deal with. In his experience there were quite a lot of mad people in the world. But Vorbis had passed right through that red barrier and had built some kind of logical structure on the other side. Rational thoughts made out of insane components...
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LibraryThing member David.Alfred.Sarkies
I can't believe that I am up to number 13 of the Discworld Books, but I guess that is not surprising since I am reading through them until I get to a point where I really don't want to read any more of them (since Pratchett still seems to be writing them for his die hard fans). I can't say that I
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am finding these books all that laugh out loud at this point in the series, however there is one thing that I can definitely say about Terry Pratchett and that is that he really knows how to end a book. Sure enough, the climax of this particular book is just as exciting as many of the other books of his that I have read. However, as I suggested, I suspect that many of his books are going to start going downhill from here.
In Small Gods Pratchett takes a satirical look at religion and philosophy, in particular the concept of monotheism. Basically a small god is a god that no longer has any worshippers and as such is stripped of all of its power. Om is almost at that particular point, except that he has one faithful believer, and that is a rather simple man name Burtha. However, ironically, the church of Om is quite powerful, it is just that they have ceased to worship Om the god and simply follow a bunch of rules and rituals that have been created by the priesthood over the centuries. Thus Om is in danger of becoming a small god.
The problem that I had with this book though is that while it is good as a fantasy story, as satire it simply does not work. The major religions of the world today are all monotheistic religions that stem from the same founder, that is Abraham. Granted we do have Hinduism, but I am disinclined to suggest that Buddhism, at its core, is a monothestic religion (it is more of an atheistic philosophy that attaches itself to other religions). Most of the polytheistic, or pantheistic religions, are generally in the minority (though they are still quite dominant in Asia, though they tend to be amalgamations of Buddhism). I suspect that if the major monotheistic religions (and the offshoots) were to be put into one category, we would find that they form a large majority of the world's population.
Therefore, satirising religion based upon the idea that a god's power is based upon the number of the god's followers simply does not work in a modern, or even in a post-modern, world, especially in such a society where the miraculous is no longer acknowledged.
However, putting aside the whole idea that I have discussed above, I think there are some very good points that Pratchett makes here, namely around the power of religion. What we see with the Omnians is the creation of a mono-culture, as they believe that not only their religion, but their form of worship and their rituals and practises are the only true way and thus they steam roll across the land destroying all forms of variety. They do not believe in making allies, or coming to agreements. It is a classic example of the bible and the gun.
Okay, I am a monotheist, and I also have a objective stance in regards to my faith, but that does not mean that everything is objective. Religion becomes dangerous when the subjective and the opinion are over-ridden by the objective, and that any form of independent thought is forbidden. I have been told that there is one particular off-shoot of Christianity where the guy at the top pretty much dictates what every adherent in the sect is supposed to read, preach, and talk about for that particular week, and there is no questioning those decrees. My response to that is 'what if that decree is wrong'. I have also seen it with regards to the attacks against Catholicism by certain evangelicals, yet in a discussion that I had last week, the only thing that we actually objected with regards to Catholicism was the deification of the saints. Pretty much every other aspect of Catholicism, when we actually think about it, is not all that offensive to evangelical Christianit – it is just that they do things a little differently to us, and in some cases, I actually think that they may do some things better than us.
It is the dogmatic attitude of some religions that Pratchett is satirising here, and we come across the conflict that this causes when the Omnians go to war against the Ephebians, which is the Discworld version of the Ancient Greeks. In a sense it is a clash against freedom of thought. What the dogmatic religion hates, and the reason that they hate it is because they fear it, is the ability to think for oneself and to question that which is around you. The reason they fear that is because freedom of thought actually gives us a form of freedom that nobody can take away. Once we begin to think for ourselves, and in doing so, begin questioning certain objective truths, the danger is that we may actually discover that these objective truths aren't actually objective, but rather relative, esoteric, or even little more than opinion. Once we begin to undermine those objective truths, the dogmatic leaders begin to lose power and, as was the case with Vorbis, end up being lost and alone.
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LibraryThing member gilag
It's the Great God Om!
LibraryThing member polarbear123
I suddenly thought after the first 30 pages or so that this would be the first Pratchett book I would not enjoy - somehow I had totally missed the thread of the storyline and didn't have a clue what was going on. I just couldn't grasp the plot at all. I stuck with it and ended up thinking that this
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was probably one of the better Pratchett books I have read - why? Well it is not so much the characters in this one, its the questions that the story forces you to ask yourself about religion and the nature of belief in general. A very thought provoking and surprisingly complex addition to the Discworld series.
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LibraryThing member kaloalex
I know I have in my hands a good Pratchett book when I laugh out loud more than once within the first ten pages. This is a very good Pratchett book. If you haven't read any of his stuff and would like to know what he can do, I heartily recommend "Small Gods".
LibraryThing member ironicqueery
Another fabulous Discworld novel. This one started off a bit slow and I was beginning to think this might end up being my least favorite of the series. However, it soon exploaded into a great story that never leads where one might expect it to. Pratchett's take on religion and philosophy is almost
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spot-on and wildly entertaining and thought-provoking.
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LibraryThing member pwaites
Small Gods is the thirteenth Discworld book, but it stands alone and can be read independently. Pretty much the only reoccurring character to make an appearance is Death, since Small Gods is set before the events in the other novels.

Brutha is a simple novice hoeing melons when his god Om speaks to
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him in the form of a tortoise, a form he’s been stuck in for three years. You see, on the Discworld, gods are created when people believe in them, and no one really believes in Om. They believe in the artifice – the buildings, the ritual, and the Quisition – but nobody believes in Om himself, except for Brutha.

Small Gods is rather obviously a satirical take on religion, but it manages to satirize without ever being mean spirited, a real accomplishment. Small Gods is also one of the deepest Discworld novels. Here, Pratchett has a lot to say on the nature of belief and humanity.

The story centers around Brutha and Om, and the two characters work very well together. Over the course of the book, they both come to grow and change, learning more about the world.

“Om began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.”

Small Gods is also one of the darker Discworld books. While still hilariously funny, this is a book that contains the Quisition, torturers who “purify” the unfaithful. The main villain, Vorbis, head of the Quisition, is undoubtedly evil, but what makes him frightening is how he shapes the people around him.

All in all, Small Gods is an excellent book. I know many people consider it to be the best Discworld novel, and I can’t say they’re wrong. I highly recommend it.

Originally posted on the The Illustrated Page.
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LibraryThing member Aldrea_Alien
Dense yet clever prophets, scary yet stupid inquisition, a god stuck as a tortoise and an eagle who really needs to find something else to eat. At the centre of this divine cyclone is the Great God Om. ^_^
I really like Om. He’s a guy who’s used to being large and in charge in his part of the
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world, then he wakes up in the middle of an attempt to be made into lunch (eagle, enter stage left) to find himself as a tortoise. Which is just plain crazy as it is. Forget about people trying to eat him - apparently, “there’s good eating on one of those” - but no one can hear him. Except for Brutha.
Poor, poor Brutha. This fellow, who only wants to be left alone, can’t seem to stop hearing Om. Both his amazing memory and the god put him in some rather sticky situations. The stickiest of all being trapped with Vorbis. The bad guy of this story.
And what a very bad man he is. His demise, which was inevitable really, could’ve happened any number of times and each time he lived, left me waiting for someone to do him in. The way it which he does die is quite laughable really. But satisfying. While I like bad guys to be bad, I love it even more when they get got.
It was in the last few pages, between the banter of god and prophet and where what was to be a battle among human turned into a fight among the gods, that really had me liking this small god. Bit sad that there’ll be no more of him conversing with Brutha though, I’d been seeing them as pair right up until the end there.
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LibraryThing member debnance
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.
LibraryThing member IAmAndyPieters
Small Gods is the story of a God that has lost almost all of its powers and is transformed into a tortoise. It is also the story of how a boy becomes a man (or rather, less of a boy) through an epic adventure that draws a similarity to our own history in the gripping and charming style that is
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Terri Pratchett. A real page turne
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LibraryThing member Narilka
Ahh, Discworld! The simple lad Brutha wants nothing more in life than to tend the temple's melon garden. The Great God Om, on the other hand, has chosen Brutha to be his next prophet. This leads Brutha on a journey that changes his life and that of his city. We meet quite the cast of eclectic
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characters along the way as well as a few cameos from Ankh-Morpork

With Small Gods Terry Pratchett pokes fun at all things religious. From religious people themselves to their institutions and practices. Underneath it is also a story about faith/belief and what happens when that belief is replaced by simple routine. Yet again Pratchett weaves an irreverent satire and yet is able to hit deeper notes as only he can. Many parts of this book were laugh out loud funny. It is an excellent stand alone book, easily readable without any prior Discworld knowledge. I could see myself reading this one again in the future.
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LibraryThing member fyrefly98
Summary: Brutha is a uneducated novice in the Church of the Great God Om, without many ambitions (or deep thoughts, for that matter), and he is happy working in the gardens of the temple. One day, he hears a voice in his head - the voice of the Great God Om - and the voice says "Psst! Hey you!" For
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the Great God Om is currently in the form of a turtle - stuck in the form of a turtle, in fact - and he, like all gods, requires true belief in order to maintain his power... and substance. Brutha may be an unlikely prophet, but he's what Om's got to work with... but will a turtle and his believer really be enough to stop an incipient holy war?

Review: Terry Pratchett's main premise in Small Gods - that gods are created by their believers, and not the other way around - is not a particularly new one, nor is his satirical take on organized religion particularly subtle. But man alive, does he take that premise and that satirical tone, and run to some damn funny places with it. Some of the running gags (everyone telling Brutha, upon seeing the turtle, "there's good eating on one of those") fell flat after a while, but others (Om's thoroughly ineffectual attempts to call down damnation and smiting on everyone who annoyed him, which was pretty much everyone) made me chuckle every time. There's also the usual complement of one-liners, which range from silly to quite sharply insightful, but always drily witty. The plot does meander a bit, and not all parts are always explained as thoroughly as they could be, or tie in as well as they should, but for the most part, things move along well enough, and the diversions are entertaining enough not to be too much of a detriment.

I haven't read many of the Discworld books, and I thought Small Gods stood on its own just fine. I do know enough to appreciate the irony of Omnianism, the religion whose God is now stuck in the form of a turtle, considering Discworld to be round, and any mention of The Great Turtle to be the vilest heresy. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Probably not for religious folks who either don't see the foibles of their religion (or religion in general), or don't like people poking fun at those foibles, but for everyone else, Small Gods is an irreverent look at the power of belief.
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LibraryThing member justine
a delightful discworld novel about gods who grow smaller through disuse, very funny
LibraryThing member reading_fox
Not one of my favourites. I'm told that those with a religious background experiance the jokes far better, but a lot of this goes over my head without making me laugh.
LibraryThing member Greatrakes
One of my favourite Pratchett's, plenty of jokes about philosophy and the nature of godhood.

And tortoises, there's good eating on one of them.
LibraryThing member rfplsam
A stand-alone in the Discworld series. Be prepared - all of the Discworld novels are going to end up in my list.

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1992

Physical description

288 p.; 8.98 inches

ISBN

0575052228 / 9780575052222
Page: 0.9064 seconds