Good Omens

If any two names sound like a match made in Heaven, it’s Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Two giants in the realm of fantasy and writing for readerships of both the young and old, there is a book that is the fruit of such a merger: Good Omens. 

The story takes place during the last days of the world. The last seven days of the world to be precise. The armies of Good and Evil are massing, the Four Horsemen are receiving their weapons and preparing to ride, witches are prophesying humanity’s demise, and the last two remaining Witchfinders are spurred into action. In a small country town, a young boy daydreams of a world made better; of lost civilizations returning, and as he continues to daydream, tensions flare and strange things start to happen. Atlantis rises from the sea. The sky rains marine life. The world is ready for Armageddon. All it needs now is the Antichrist. There’s just one spanner in the works: he seems to have been misplaced. 

I’m not practiced in any religion, but I do find contemporary interpretations and retellings of the stories to always be a crowd-pleaser. A story with recognizable characters and events is quick to receive attention and hold that attention until the last page is turned. Such is the case with Good Omens, a Bildungsroman tale set amidst Christian mythology. Truth be told, there are a great many things going on in this book and this is not considering the multiple characters and plotlines that intersect one another. 

The novel begins with this wonderfully crisp and witty tone of a British comedy: full of sophisticated asides to the reader, comments on the state of the world (the fictional and the real), and chronicling a simple task that somehow manages to get completely screwed up. 

Fastforward a few years and then the drama of the story manifests as the representatives of Heaven and Hell discover that something’s gone wrong and they have to race against the clock to hide the mistake from their superiors. From there it twists and turns between being a quest narrative to stop the destruction of Earth and being a coming-of-age tale (a little reminiscent of a Stephen King novella) depicting the innocence and clarity of children. Like with any enthralling read, the fun comes from the readers’ being in the complete know rather than the characters. This is fun, but it’s also torturous as, at certain points, all we want to do is shout into the pages, “wrong baby!” 

Pratchett and Gaiman create glorious imagery without giving too much away in words, they really let your mind do the work, and then they reward you with little dashes of delicious humour and weirdness all throughout. 

Good Omens is an engaging book from start to finish and one that I would highly recommend if you’re a fan of either Gaiman or Pratchett’s work. It’s clever, it’s witty, and it’s a modernly relevant interpretation of a phenomenon and belief that every religion has documented. 

Author: Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett 

Published: 1990, Victor Gollancz Ltd