Good Omens
By Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - 383 pages, 1990
"I don't see what's so terrific about creatin people as people and then gettin' upset cos they act like people."
I can't remember the last time I read a book that made me laugh out loud in the first 20 pages. I don't think I EVER read a book that kept me in a near constant state of "Don't laugh out loud. People don't laugh out loud to themselves at a book!"
But that's what Pratchett and Gaiman have created. A hilarious, though provoking, endearing and suspenseful view of the biblicly prophesied Great War of Armageddon.
The story follows Aziraphale - an angel who maintains a day job as a used book sales man, and Crowley - a stylish demon whose vintage bentley is loved by him only slightly more than the chance to tempt and malign a human soul. They are in regular contact, maintaining something of a battlefield truce for the last 6,000 years or so.
These uncommon bedfellows each are take aback when it's announced from above (and below) that the antichrist is about to be brought into the world. Signaling the end of all the world in eleven years time. They've both become quite attached to the world, and decide to work together to ensure that the endbringer's upbringing is as well-balanced as possible, ensuring a stalemate on the cosmic chessboard and the continuing of humanity unscathed.
This would have worked out beautifully if not for the circumstances that lead the bouncing baby beelz to be switched with the wrong earth baby, losing him entirely to a perfectly normal, British family in Tadsfield, England.
Adam, as the boy is named conveniently, grows up unaware of his power or place in the chain that draws the end days inexorably closer. In the meantime, eleven years pass by, and the other events - including the activation of the four horsemen (minus pestilence, who retired after the invention of penicillin) - continue on plan as if nothing is amiss.
the story is delivered in movie like format. One could easily have seen the details delivered on screen, but that's clearly intentional. Every few pages, the test is sprinkled with footnotes, providing amusing and wonderfully unnecessary asides to the story proper.
The authors trod precariously on the line between preachy and taunting with their views on environmentalism and humanity's own march towards ecological destruction, but relax on it just in time for it to be merely observational. The seriousness of the horrors experienced in what would be the end of days is stark and visceral, and ultimately tempered by the innocence and naivi te of an eleven year boy and his quest to figure out the world and his place in it. Wonderful. Must read. (5/5 Stars)
"I don't see what's so terrific about creatin people as people and then gettin' upset cos they act like people."
I can't remember the last time I read a book that made me laugh out loud in the first 20 pages. I don't think I EVER read a book that kept me in a near constant state of "Don't laugh out loud. People don't laugh out loud to themselves at a book!"
But that's what Pratchett and Gaiman have created. A hilarious, though provoking, endearing and suspenseful view of the biblicly prophesied Great War of Armageddon.
The story follows Aziraphale - an angel who maintains a day job as a used book sales man, and Crowley - a stylish demon whose vintage bentley is loved by him only slightly more than the chance to tempt and malign a human soul. They are in regular contact, maintaining something of a battlefield truce for the last 6,000 years or so.
These uncommon bedfellows each are take aback when it's announced from above (and below) that the antichrist is about to be brought into the world. Signaling the end of all the world in eleven years time. They've both become quite attached to the world, and decide to work together to ensure that the endbringer's upbringing is as well-balanced as possible, ensuring a stalemate on the cosmic chessboard and the continuing of humanity unscathed.
This would have worked out beautifully if not for the circumstances that lead the bouncing baby beelz to be switched with the wrong earth baby, losing him entirely to a perfectly normal, British family in Tadsfield, England.
Adam, as the boy is named conveniently, grows up unaware of his power or place in the chain that draws the end days inexorably closer. In the meantime, eleven years pass by, and the other events - including the activation of the four horsemen (minus pestilence, who retired after the invention of penicillin) - continue on plan as if nothing is amiss.
the story is delivered in movie like format. One could easily have seen the details delivered on screen, but that's clearly intentional. Every few pages, the test is sprinkled with footnotes, providing amusing and wonderfully unnecessary asides to the story proper.
The authors trod precariously on the line between preachy and taunting with their views on environmentalism and humanity's own march towards ecological destruction, but relax on it just in time for it to be merely observational. The seriousness of the horrors experienced in what would be the end of days is stark and visceral, and ultimately tempered by the innocence and naivi te of an eleven year boy and his quest to figure out the world and his place in it. Wonderful. Must read. (5/5 Stars)