Small Gods

Terry Pratch­ett’s Small Gods is a good place to start in the pan­theon of the Dis­cworld books. That’s the reas­on we chose it, rather than one of the many oth­ers, to read in book club. There are a couple of places where hav­ing read some of the oth­er books would give some addi­tion­al depth (the lib­rar­i­an, or Death), but it’s not neces­sary for the enjoy­ment of the story. There are a lot of Dis­cworld books. To get some­thing of a pic­ture of how they’re all related, try the Read­ing Order Guide (link from Boing­Bo­ing).

I remem­ber read­ing Dis­cworld books when I was study­ing phys­ics, but then some­how got out of the habit (prob­ably because they wer­en’t read­ily avail­able in Ger­many where I was liv­ing at the time). So I was glad to be reminded of just how good a read they can be. Small Gods is a par­ody of reli­gions, gods, and inquis­i­tions. It tells the story of a small god (the defin­i­tion being one that does­n’t have many fol­low­ers and there­fore does­n’t have much power) and his sym­bi­os­is with the one true believ­er. Along the way, Pratch­ett neatly pokes fun at organ­ized reli­gion, the Inquis­i­tion, philo­soph­ers, and lots of oth­er things. It’s the sort of book you read for the snide asides as much as the storyline. It can be read at lots of levels; you can just read and enjoy the story or think about the deep­er implic­a­tions for com­par­at­ive reli­gions. We had fun dis­cuss­ing the rela­tion­ship between Om and Brutha in terms of who needed whom the most. Both Om and Brutha change and learn dur­ing the book’s events; Om becom­ing less venge­ful (although while he’s in tor­toise form there’s not much he can do to carry out any venge­ful actions) and more thought­ful through being mal­treated (run­ning gag: “there’s good eat­ing on a tor­toise” with­in earshot of him) and through Brutha’s bar­gain­ing power (he is, after all, the reas­on that Om is sen­tient although it takes him a while to fig­ure that out).

All in all, worth try­ing if you haven’t already, even if you don’t usu­ally read fantasy or sci­ence fic­tion. Just don’t blame me if you get hooked on the series.