A, Small Gods: Discworld Novel

There are some books that make you rethink things in a massive way. This one is one of them. The book opened my mind to the boundaries between faith, religion, and the religious. It shaped my understanding in this matter in a way that still holds today, nearly 20 years after I first picked it up. Heck, I even referenced it during my university studies, much to the awe and surprise of the lecturer who heard it (He never expected this sort of thinking from an undergrad).
But even if you don't need to have someone shatter your world, even if this stuff is clear to you, this is still a ridiculously funny, heartfelt, and interesting book to read. It will take you on a journey across desserts and seas along with a boy and a turtle and a whole lot of characters, from crypto-atheists to waterlogged philosophers to people up poles and steam powered turtles.
It's a Discworld novel, and a wonder.
Just pick it up and you'll see what I mean.

Nobody can discuss serious philosophical issues in hysterically funny ways like Terry Pratchett. Small gods is as intelligent exploration of theology and people's relationship to religion as you'll find but if that's not what you want to take from it you'll have a great time laughing through the book. The Turtle Moves.

Terry Pratchett draws on a number of thinly disguised analogies to religious beliefs of ordinary people. I found it absolutely hilarious as well as somewhat thought provoking. I highly recommend it to anyone who isn't sensitive to the religious puns.

This is a highly entertaining and amusing satire that exposes the folly of blind dogma, and the virtue of learning to think for yourself. Reads like a modern version of Voltaire's Candide, packed with amusing wit and satire around a theme of challenging dogma to think for oneself.

What do gods need to be gods?

Donald Freund wrote "To be God, God needs Man, as Man needs God to be Man." Heresy? Maybe.

Belief. As long as one person believes, a God lives. Needless to say, the Disc is littered with dead gods. Thousands upon thousands. Who once ruled all they could see. And now, most of whom are lost voices in a desert.

Or a tortoise named Om.

This is the story of Om, his believer and how one believer arguing and wrestling with his God can change the world.

I'd had several friends tell me that Small Gods was among their favorites in the Discworld series.

The were sandbagging. Small Gods is the most profoundly moving novel I've read years. I cried no less than three times at the breath-taking humongousness of the ideas in this book.

It is just as entertaining and well written as all the other Discworld Novels. The basic philosophy about the nature of religion is brilliant; it is much more credible and closer to reality than the official dogmas of most of the existing religions. Actually, it is quite close to Nordic paganism (as practiced in Iceland), traditional Shinto (not the official version practiced by the Japanese state) and religious Taoism.

Entertaining, but not as funny as some of his other novels. I think he was too worried about poking fun at religion, but that was the core of the book. By stopping short it never quite hit the humourous highs it should have.

Yea verily sayith sir Terry. Not really one of his better ones. But you know it's Terry Pratchett. He's supposed to hold the mirror up for all of us to see how sublimely silly everything is. Minorly amusing for a God to transform so as to terrify us some, only to find out his religion has moved beyond him. So he ends up a tortoise. An unthinking tortoise, until an eagle drops him by his only believer. Then shenanigans ensue. Whatever.