I keep telling myself I'm going to write a better review of this thing, and I keep not doing it. Why? The book deserves a more thorough review. My difficulty seems to be that my reaction is just so damn personal. 
 We all know I consider Terry Pratchett my long-lost, time-travelling twin, right? So maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise when his books make me feel like he has been rattling around in MY skull, turning over stones and digging for buried metaphors. Leave me a few, old man! 
 What I admire most about Terry Pratchett, and there's much to admire (is that vain, given the previous paragraph? Probably), is the way he digs into questions of belief. All kinds of belief - and all kinds of questions. Prejudice, for example, stems from beliefs as surely as religion does. This book explores both, turning them inside-out and looking at them from behind. He makes such good use of the genre; he can talk about dwarves hating werewolves hating golems without stepping on the toes of any group that actually exists. He can pit Omnians vs. devotees of the crocodile god Offler, and nobody's going to be offended. 
 He can let a golem - who isn't even technically alive - have a universe-spanning, mind-blowing mystical experience that results in atheism... with total plausible deniability. If anyone says, "Wait, how can that happen? How can he have this deep, moving, mystical experience, something generally considered the realm of holy sages, and still somehow conclude there is no god?" 
 The answer could plausibly be: "Well, ha ha, it's just a golem in a fantasy novel! A real person wouldn't conclude that! A real person would feel like they'd had a holy revelation -- from god!" 
 Except (I say, in my tiniest voice) a real person might, in fact, have a mystical experience and conclude there's no god. I suspect Pratchett has, given his description. It is an experience so intensely personal, and downright weird, that giving it to a golem is pretty much the only way you're going to be able to get away with it. I am in awe. And, as one who has seen the bigness in the smallness, and taken comfort in the emptiness, I am profoundly grateful to know that I am not alone in my weirdness.