Good Omens

Title: Good Omens
Author: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Published: 1990, this edition is by Corgi.
Genre: It's the end of the wooorld!
Pages: 383


After finishing Why... I started on another book. It was kind of slow reading, but I kept going. Halfway through 400+ page book I realised that I don't really care what happens, in the story or to any of the characters. So I put that aside and, feeling a little burned out, picked up Good Omens. I was a wee teenager when I first read this, in Finnish, though, and the last time I remember reading it was when I was barely 20. So it was well due a re-read!

Misters Gaiman and Pratchett join forces to bring on the end of the wooorld! The combination of Pratchett's humour, Gaiman's darker style, and their shared awesomeness produced something that makes you laugh (and maybe even cry a little) despite the fact that Armageddon is here! The angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley have been kind of friends, despite the obvious differences, for some six thousand years. Living on the Earth in some kind of harmony, steering things gently their own ways, when needed, and feeding the ducks. When the Antichrist is finally born -and shuffled around by nuns with severe communication problems- and grows ready to instigate the end of the wooorld!, the friends realise that they don't actually really want that.

Added in the mix are the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of witch Agnes Nutter, her professional descendant, the Withchfinder army, the Four Horsemen -with modern horses- and the Antichrist and his gang. Plus some lost Tibetans. Oh, and angels and demons, of course. And my favourite fact of cassette tapes left in the car for more than a fortnight...

Good Omens was as fun as ever, and a nice pick-me-up in these dark days. Meaning, of course, November. 


Crowley, somewhere west of Amersham, hurtled through the night, snatched a tape at random and tried to wrestle it out of its brittle plastic box while staying on the road. The glare of a headlight proclaimed it to be Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Soothing music, that's what he needed. 
   He rammed it into the Blaupunkt.
   'Ohshitohshitohshit. Why now? Why me?' he muttered, as the familiar strains of Queen washed over him. 
   And suddenly, Freddie Mercury was speaking to him: BECAUSE YOU'VE EARNED IT, CROWLEY.