Small Gods cover art

Small Gods

Discworld, Book 13

 Preview
This Season's Biggest Deal

£0.99/mo for 3 months + £10 Audible bonus

Auto-renews at £5.99/month after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Get this deal
Offer ends on 28 December, 2026.
More purchase options

Small Gods

By: Terry Pratchett
Narrated by: Andy Serkis, Bill Nighy, Peter Serafinowicz
Get this deal

Auto-renews at £5.99/mo. after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 28 December, 2026.

Buy Now for £13.79

Buy Now for £13.79

This Season's Biggest Deal | £0.99/mo for 3 months + £10 Audible bonus

£5.99/mo after 3 months - terms apply. Cancel monthly
Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Over 1 million Discworld audiobooks sold – discover the extraordinary universe of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld like never before

The audiobook of Small Gods is narrated by the BAFTA award-winning actor and director Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings; Planet of the Apes). BAFTA and Golden Globe award-winning actor Bill Nighy (Love Actually; Pirates of the Caribbean; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) reads the footnotes, and Peter Serafinowicz (Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace; Shaun of the Dead) stars as the voice of Death. Featuring a new theme tune composed by James Hannigan.

'You should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.'

Religion is a competitive business in the Discworld. Everyone has their own opinion and their own gods, of every shape and size - all fighting for faith, followers, and a place at the top.

So when the great god Om accidentally manifests himself as a lowly tortoise, stripped of all divine power, it's clear he's become less important than he realised.

In such instances, you need an acolyte, and fast. Enter Brutha, the Chosen One - or at least the only One available. He wants peace, justice and love - but that's hard to achieve in a world where religion means power, and corruption reigns supreme...

'An intriguing satire on institutionalized religion corrupted by power . . .' Independent

'Deftly weaves themes of forgiveness, belief and spiritual regeneration' The Times

You can listen to the Discworld novels in any order, but Small Gods is a standalone.

The first book in the Discworld series - The Colour of Magic - was published in 1983. Some elements of the Discworld universe may reflect this.

©1992 Terry and Lyn Pratchet (P)2022 Penguin Audio

 Action & Adventure Epic Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Humorous Literature & Fiction Satire Comedy Funny Thought-Provoking Celebrity
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

Critic reviews

'Deftly weaves themes of forgiveness, belief and spiritual regeneration....While other writers gnaw at violence, sexuality and rootless despair'
'An intriguing satire on institutionalized religion corrupted by power, crackling with one-liners while obliquely suggesting that maybe gods are only as powerful as the beliefs of their followers'
'Spectacular inventiveness make the Discworld series one of the perennial joys of modern fiction'
All stars
Most relevant
Andy Serkis reading Terry Pratchett and Small Gods at that. Is there any need for further reviews?

The greatest narrator meets the greatest author.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Andy Serkis does a great job of bringing this tale to life - although a Liverpudlian God in the body of a turtle took me a little by surprise- and has given many happy hours listening. Excellent story by the master himself - Sir Terry Pratchett - and this version does not disappoint

Brilliant telling of a wonderful book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Andy Serkis is masterful as always and does a great job bringing the characters to life. The only issue I've got is the voice of Vorbis. Nobody talks like that. It just made me irritated.
The voice of Death was just boring as hell. Dull and nothing special at all. Not even a small echo like we've been used to hear from other adaptations.
And the footnotes by Bill also sounded off and full. A waste of talent.
But on the whole a good adaptation that was saved by Andys storytelling.

Almost there....

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I'm a massive pratchett fan but the narrator almost put me off one of his best books. some of the accents verge on criminal.

Great story, but some of the voices are just weird and wrong sounding.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is my second audiobook in the new Penguin series of Sir Terry’s books although I have about 40 overall. I didn't think the first one was very good: this is acceptable although it still wasn’t excellent and has a few problems.
Andy Serkis has a beautiful voice and it’s a very able performance. However, it is disappointing that it still doesn’t equal the Nigel Planer performances (even with lamentable sound quality) and is still well off the standard of Stephen Briggs.
The thing about Briggs particularly is he’s a real fan of Pratchett’s work and totally gets it. It makes a big difference because he really knows the work.
I felt it needed more rehearsal-again. There’s a strong feeling that Serkis although an excellent actor with a strong vocal range, really didn’t spend enough time getting to grips with the characters or the story. Whether you like the characterisations or not will be a matter of taste but more time would have shown that, for instance, the vocabulary used by the philosophers would never be that of a Californian hippy so they just didn’t work and they were irritating. There’s personal opinion and there are mistakes and that is illogical so it's a mistake.
I found a video about the making of this series and one of the actors explains how she trusted her instinct at the beginning and was pleased to find later in the book there was a description that corresponded to her original idea. Well I say to that, ‘Why didn’t you read the whole book before you started?’ I think it speaks volumes.
The footnotes are irritating and Bill Nighy is phoning it in from a coal cellar by the sound of it.
The tinkly sound cutting in doesn’t help. You really have to be a die-hard Nighy fan to get anything from this performance.
However, my biggest complaint-again-is the lack of attention to the comedy. These are very funny books and Serkis for all his ability doesn’t have a good feel for comedy. This isn’t his fault it’s the fault of Penguin in totally missing the importance of this and going for a name and a serious actor rather than someone who gets comedy. Maybe more preparation would have helped here too as comedy is largely about timing and rhythm?
The footnotes really sum this up for me. They are generally jokes. Funny observations. Sometimes, they could very easily just follow on from the narration, sometimes it would be better to simply say, ‘Footnote’ and they do include them in the other performances but in any case they are usually funny and they should be performed with respect to the comedy so that you get to laugh. To have them just thrown away in this bland, dull, dead-space drone, really shows they just don’t get the material they are working with.
Overall, I did enjoy this audiobook and I may well try another in the series. It was 'good enough' and if you are new to Pratchett you may well be impressed. But for those with previous experience it did disappoint and it’s very sad that the excellent older versions are being removed as these arrive because they are actually superior.
Giving better sound quality to the old ones would have increased sales enormously.
A missed opportunity but if you know about the history of Sir Terry’s novels then you’ll know that’s pretty much been the story since the start. (His fans have constantly gone to great lengths to buy them despite the publishers repeatedly messing things up).

A missed opportunity

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews