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Thursday, May 04, 2006

Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

cover of Good Omens

Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett's humorous take on the apocalypse-- the antichrist has been misplaced (accidentally switched and given to the wrong family at birth). The two central characters are an angel and a demon, the field agents of heaven and hell who have more in common with each other than their respective home bases. In fact, they go way back-- all the way back to the graden of Eden. Crowley (then called Crawly) was the serpentine tempter, and Aziraphale was the Angel who was supposed to stand guard Eden to keep Adam and Even from coming back (in fact, he thought they looked cold so he gave them his flaming sword to keep warm). Aziraphale and Crawley both really like Earth and humans and they don't want everything destroyed in the coming Armageddon.

This is a really funny book-- I think I was laughing within the first few pages. There are even footnotes which are quite hilarious (one footnote explains the British money system, and then states that they never went to a metric system because it would be too complicated). Even the "about the author" paragraphs made me laugh. I discovered, however, that one of the trade-offs with a humorous novel like this is that it's harder to get invested in the characters-- I didn't really care that much about the apocalypse because I knew the world wouldn't be destroyed (since that wouldn't be funny).

Title:Good Omens
Author:Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett
Date published:1990
Genre:Science Fiction, Humor
Number of pages:367

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