Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1992
272 pages
Discworld; Fantasy
4/5 stars
Source: Library
Summary: The god Om is a tortoise and is sustained by the belief of a single man, Brutha. In order to regain his position, Om must use the simple but good-hearted Brutha to manipulate events and enact real change.
Thoughts: I am so bad at summing up and reviewing Pratchett's novels. They're really good and really funny-what more could one want? This one had some really good bits, including jabs at religion, philosophy, war-mongerers, etc. At the beginning, there's a lovely passage about history.
As far as I'm aware the only recurring character to appear is Death. I'm not sure that Brutha or any of the other characters are in any other Discworld novels. In fact, I'm pretty positive that they aren't which could make this a good first choice to be introduced to Discworld; you don't have to know any backstories although you do have to be prepared for Pratchett's writing style.
Overall: As I said, this could be a good introduction to the series as it's not a series that has to be read in order although that could be interesting too.
Cover: The tortoise is very important to the story.
I thought this completed my challenge but it turns out that I signed up for 6-8 books, not the 1-3 that I thought I had (I guess I should have checked this earlier). I don't think I will have time to read three more before the challenge ends but I hope to get at least one more read and reviewed.
Lovely! I know someone who loves Terry Pratchett, LOVES, and she was just telling me about this book the other day. Pratchett hasn't really managed to lure me in yet, but you never know, I might give his work a try in the future. Which one of his novels would be a good start for someone who hasn't read anything by Pratchett yet?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that the first Pratchett I read was Maskerade which you might like Irena as it has parallels to the Phantom of the Opera. Otherwise it kind of depends on what you think sounds most interesting. I tried to read Color of Magic (the first in the series) before that but didn't like it whereas I loved the POTO references in Maskerade.
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