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A review by iswendle
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
5.0
What starts off as another quick witted adventure into the flat world carried by a turtle ends on a clever parody on human faith.
I read this book after Mort, which is Pratchett's first work about Death. In Small Gods, you can really see Pratchett put aside his love for parody of fantasy, and instead wrote a book that tells the actual story of humankind and faith (just hidden in the shell of a parody). Don't get me wrong, Small Gods reads like a discworld novel throughout the first 250 pages, but the last 50 put it in overdrive! The comedy takes the back seat, Pratchett delivers something that feels like a speech: the world religions are just repetitions of one another, built upon some ideas of kindness and then turned into a human construct (the books, the bureaucracy, the holy wars). The cycle will always continue, unless you can build a religion without the divine part; the basis should be the kindness, doing something out of the kindness of your heart, not that of a/the Lord.
At least that's what I read in those last pages, though it is still filled with a storm of typically atypical fantasy tropes interacting with one another, it's still just a fun book too.
So had it not been for those convincing last pages, it would be a fun discworld novel. But the ending delivered something entirely different on a seemingly mellow setup. I loved it, also Death made his usual appearances, which you cannot help but smile at. The "best" Discworld novel.
I read this book after Mort, which is Pratchett's first work about Death. In Small Gods, you can really see Pratchett put aside his love for parody of fantasy, and instead wrote a book that tells the actual story of humankind and faith (just hidden in the shell of a parody). Don't get me wrong, Small Gods reads like a discworld novel throughout the first 250 pages, but the last 50 put it in overdrive! The comedy takes the back seat, Pratchett delivers something that feels like a speech: the world religions are just repetitions of one another, built upon some ideas of kindness and then turned into a human construct (the books, the bureaucracy, the holy wars). The cycle will always continue, unless you can build a religion without the divine part; the basis should be the kindness, doing something out of the kindness of your heart, not that of a/the Lord.
At least that's what I read in those last pages, though it is still filled with a storm of typically atypical fantasy tropes interacting with one another, it's still just a fun book too.
So had it not been for those convincing last pages, it would be a fun discworld novel. But the ending delivered something entirely different on a seemingly mellow setup. I loved it, also Death made his usual appearances, which you cannot help but smile at. The "best" Discworld novel.