| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: Low (aside from some suggestive comments about melons) Violence level: Medium-High (if it were described in more detail, I'd say High, but things are sort of glossed over) Back Cover: “A simple lad who can neither read nor write, Brutha is content growing melons for the Temple monks. But his lot changes when a tortoise appears in his garden. To Brutha's dismay, he discovers that he's become his god's Chosen One—a difficult position that requires spreading goodness and stopping holy wars. Of course no good deed goes unpunished, and soon some rather inquisitive folk are taking an unhealthy interest in Brutha. They don't see the need for peace, love, and tolerance. They liked the old days just fine. And Brutha, too, yearns for the simple life he once led—a desire that leads him to wonder just why his god didn't choose someone else.” |
And then there's Vorbis, who pretty nearly personifies true evil. It's not so much what he does, because he's more an orchestrator than a performer. He gets other people to do the bad things for him, but even that isn't why I call him truly evil. It's the way he talks about it. He isn't justifying his actions—I think that's the worst part. He honestly believes that what he's doing is right, and that makes it that much easier for the people who listen to him to ignore their conscience and follow him. As a villain, that makes him a really good opponent for Brutha, who very nearly has nothing going for him other than a conscience. It takes Brutha a while to get the right and wrong sorted out, but once he does, he won't deviate from it.
Given that the gods of Discworld are a lot like the Greek or Roman pantheon (which is to say that in terms of actual righteousness, they're rather lower than humanity, while at the same time having inadvisable amounts of power), maybe it's not surprising that the god Om has to learn religion from Brutha. And the most impressive thing is that in spite of that (which might seem like a criticism of organized religion), it actually turns out to be a strong support of faith and compassion and brotherly kindness, and basically all the things that most organized religions ask for.