The butts of the jokes are identifiable, with the Spanish Inquisition, Galileo and Greek philosophy coming in for a more or less equal share of satire, but there are also serious questions about the nature of faith. If Pratchett’s early Discworld books are riffs on self-contained themes – whether that’s Ancient Egypt, Hollywood, Macbeth, or Faust – Small Gods broadens its scope slightly. Especially because the Great God appears to have manifested in the form of a small, irascible and very disgruntled tortoise… So when, one day, he hears the voice of Om speaking to him in a garden, he doesn’t know quite what to think. Clumsy Brutha the novice is at the bottom of the heap, well-meaning, blissfully naive and – crucially – pure of heart. Here we find ourselves in the Omnian Empire, a theocracy devoted to the Great God Om and ruled by its ferocious Exquisitor, the hawk-nosed Deacon Vorbis. I think at the time – and it holds true now too – it felt odd to be taken away from the characters who were increasingly becoming Pratchett’s ‘regulars’ into a completely new setting, with no familiar faces. Small Gods is one of the books I remember least from the first time around. Having skipped temporarily out of order with Men at Arms and Going Postal, I decided to get the Discworld Reread back on track.
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