EdibleFuchsia reviewed Good Omens by Terry Pratchett
Good fun
5 stars
The one set on Earth with Crowley & friends and Agnes Nutter and her prophecies. Great fun, excellent plot.
The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation
audio cd, 1 pages
Published Jan. 29, 2015 by BBC Books.
Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don't let you go around again until you get it right.
According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch - the world's only totally reliable guide to the future, written in 1655, before she exploded - the world will end on a Saturday.
Next Saturday, in fact. Just after tea...
People have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it's only natural to be sceptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day.
This time though, the armies of Good and Evil really do appear to be massing. The four Bikers of the Apocalypse are hitting the road. But both the angels and demons - well, one fast-living demon and a somewhat fussy angel - would quite like the Rapture not to happen.
Oh, and someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist...
The one set on Earth with Crowley & friends and Agnes Nutter and her prophecies. Great fun, excellent plot.
This was a light and mostly funny read with some (to me) novel ideas, but not hilarious or deep. I was hoping for either. I would probably have enjoyed this book more 20 years ago at the end of my teens.
I recently read American Gods by one of the authors (Neil Gaiman). That book made a much bigger impression with more interesting ideas.
I read this about 20 years ago and liked it then, so I thought I'd give it a re-read. It's nothing like I remember.
I was a little surprised by this one. Maybe I’m not the right target audience but I found it all just a tiny bit too whimsical for me. I still thoroughly enjoyed it though, just not 5 stars enjoyed it
The vocabulary and narrative style can be a little hard to grasp (there is some old spelling and grammar, for example). For people who's mother tongue is not English, I would recommend reading it in their first languange, if possible.
Funny and sarcastic view of the world at the very end.
Read for the umpteenth time. Still as good as ever.
This collaboration represents the first foray by Neil Gaiman into novel writing (as opposed to graphic novel writing, in which field he was already famous for Sandman). It doesn't feel like a Gaiman book at all, though. The mass of one-line jokes, repeated jokes and bad puns seem entirely Pratchett and they are unrelenting. The weird thing about them is that they didn't seem that funny. Not unfunny, just for the most part mildly amusing, rather than raucous belly-laugh inducing. I remember the other Pratchett novels I've read as funnier than that - but that was many years ago; maybe my taste has changed or my memory is faulty.
The funniest aspect of the book is the plot which involves the imminent Apocalypse, as predicted by the sub-titular Angnes Nutter. This book is mildly subversive (if you are Christian) in its suggestion that humans can create enough evil for any …
This collaboration represents the first foray by Neil Gaiman into novel writing (as opposed to graphic novel writing, in which field he was already famous for Sandman). It doesn't feel like a Gaiman book at all, though. The mass of one-line jokes, repeated jokes and bad puns seem entirely Pratchett and they are unrelenting. The weird thing about them is that they didn't seem that funny. Not unfunny, just for the most part mildly amusing, rather than raucous belly-laugh inducing. I remember the other Pratchett novels I've read as funnier than that - but that was many years ago; maybe my taste has changed or my memory is faulty.
The funniest aspect of the book is the plot which involves the imminent Apocalypse, as predicted by the sub-titular Angnes Nutter. This book is mildly subversive (if you are Christian) in its suggestion that humans can create enough evil for any purpose without requiring any external supernatural influences. Such thinly disguised "messages" also remind me of the other Pratchett novels I've read. Whatever contribution Gaiman made, it didn't show up as distinctively his at all.