Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

This book was recommended to me by a few friends who said it is awesome so I borrowed it and read it. The basic story is that Armageddon is upon us and the Antichrist is brought to earth to eventually destroy it while heaven and hell fight each other. The problem is that an angel and a demon who have lived on earth since it's creation about 6000 years ago are quite fond of it and would like to keep it around. They both try to influence the Antichrist during his upbringing but when he turns eleven they notice that the boy they thought was the Antichrist is in fact just a normal human. So where is the Antichrist and can they stop him from destroying the world?

Apart from this there are quite a few sub-plots, we get to follow the four horsemen on their journey towards the centre of destruction, there is a witch whose ancestor predicted the end of the world and a witch-hunter that are also involved, and many more but I liked the parts that involved Crowley and Aziraphale the best. Their relation to each other is interesting. They are angel and demon which makes them enemies but, as Crowley puts it, “an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him a sort of friend.” They are the only ones on earth that don’t die and so they hang around each other, besides they are very similar and when Crowley does something like changing paint-ball guns into real guns so that people really begin killing each other Aziraphale’s reprimand is more like a habitual one than one with real conviction behind it. In the same way Crowley tolerates when Aziraphale does good. They are like an old couple who put up with each others bad habits for the sake of the general peace of the relationship. These two characters made the book for me, I love them. The rest of the book with all its sub-plots and, truthfully speaking, quite boring characters were mostly long-wound and made me loose the urge to keep reading.

The book in general is quite slow-paced and with quite detailed descriptions of all the characters doings, especially the few hours before the supposed end of the world. Some of these parts seem to be included for the sole sake of wittiness, which is confirmed in the interview with the authors in the end where they say the goal of what they wrote was to make each other laugh. The book is admittedly witty and smart in an amusing way but wittiness for its own sake can push it over the line and make it tedious.

The concept is smart and clever and the way the Christian theory of evolution is used is spot on. It is a well-written book and I like the wittiness, even if it goes overboard at times. Good Omens is a well-loved book around the world which it could not have become without being as well-written as it is, but its strength lies more in the technical skills of the writers than the content of the story. On a whole I liked the book, if not all parts of it, but to me it will not become the tattered worn copy that has been read and re-read dozens of times.