Small Gods
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was: "Hey, you!" For Brutha the novice is the Chosen One. He wants peace and justice and brotherly love. He also wants the Inquisition to stop torturing him now, please...
Stats for nerds
47recommend
87mentions
71people
2014–2026years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If you haven't tried it, Small Gods is frequently recommended as a standalone, and it's very far in subject matter from the early tolkien-parody rincewind/guards books.
- Many Pratchett books aren't riffs on Tolkien at all. Someone recommended Small Gods (excellent choice, and not a whiff of Elves or Dwarves there) but many other Pratchett books are genuinely good and not cheap shots at Tolkien.
I say give it another try.
- My advice has always been to start with Small Gods. It is a standalone book that references but does not rely on any others, and is far enough into his career that it’s fair to say that if you don’t like it, you won’t like his work in general.
- It's pretty tangential, but
> It’s not clear to me how a specific next friend is established - what if the god has a lot of friends?
reminded me of Pratchett's Small Gods. If you needed a random book recommendation, this is it.
- Terry Pratchett's classic book "Small Gods" has a section that is perhaps inspired quite directly by the Church, comparing it to a type of shellfish: "Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed."
I think Pope Francis was committed to trying to dig through some of the shell to get to the godly bits of the religion, and this is deeply laudable. It was frankly weird to see the opposition to some of his seemingly obviously Christian stances. He'd say something like "I guess I don't really approve of gay people marrying, but I think we should be focusing on all of these suffering and dying poor people?" and then a bunch of people would bitch about it.
- (Edited to add: Sorry, too long of a post here. I didn’t bother to renew my domain this year)
A timely piece I can relate to. currently starting my second week in a (US) hospital oncology ward after my 11th cycle of chemo. I was first diagnosed with stage iv colon cancer and after chemo, surgery, resections and stubbornness was NED from 2018 to 2025. The return is inoperable and I was given “six months to a year”.
I asked if I’d be in pain when death came, and he said that I wouldn’t likely be - it would just be feeling more and more tired. That’s basically what’s been happening.
The chemo itself hasn’t given me direct side effects like skin lesions or mouth sores, nor much nausea. The secondary effects on my kidneys (which were already doing poorly before this started) and liver (cirrhosis) plus the metastases in lymph nodes and lung leads to edema. Diuretics helped but flushed out my potassium, so there several months where they trying to balance those electrolytes.
Anyway, a lot of my swelling was reduced (and they took 4L from two rounds of draining my lungs) but for some ungodly reason my scrotal sack decided it wanted to play too, and became the size and consistency of one of those half size basketballs you can win at fairs. it’s so bad that I actually requested a catheter. The swelling makes walking or anything else really painful.
The oncology wing I’m in doesn’t seem soaked in the kind of depressing, institutional green malaise of slightly older hospitals but it isn’t a “nice place” to die (I don’t expect to do that this visit in any case). The older woman (70?) two doors down though - seems to be in constant pain and in and out of lucidity, shouting at everyone. Usually a phrase gets stuck on repeat for a few hours - the most heartbreaking was “mommy get my mommy I’m sorry mommy I’m a bad girl mommy stop it” yelled loudly for hours.
This is a generic hospital though. Memorial Sloan-Kettering in NYC has a patient day lounge and lots of projects for child patients and patients families. Still not even approaching the quality described
Sorry, rambling. Probably my way of compartmentalizing the anxiety.
The other thing I wanted to say is that I really liked Christopher Hitchens “Mortality” and that Terry Pratchett’s very relatable death character shows up in all of his books. My favorite quote is from “Small Gods” as Death comes for the protagonist at the very end:
> “Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?” said Brutha. WHO KNOWS? “And what is at the end of the desert?” JUDGMENT. Brutha considered this. “Which end?” Death grinned and stepped aside.
Maybe I’m not afraid of death because as a devout atheist - well yea, we all get to do that at some point.
