Good Omens (Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett)
There is nothing more fascinating about the universe than its prophesied end. Well, except sex, good motion pictures and (some would say) American football, perhaps. Even so, the doom and gloom of the Apocalypse has captivated humanity as long as there’s been humans to contemplate how they were created, the point of life and how it would probably end in a fiery ball of misery. (I know, we humans are so cheerful and optimistic with our four horsemen, showers of frogs and flaming wormwood, aren’t we?) In this satirical play on Apocalyptic myth and prediction, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett turn “end times” legends on their head with large doses of humor and blasphemous fun.
In the beginning, there was God and the angels, and after a great “falling” out came the devil and his demons. Both the forces of good and evil twiddled their thumbs and played a cosmic game of chess (or, why not, Chutes and Ladders) with the human race, biding their time until the ultimate showdown, throw down, last-man-standing-takes-all war to destroy the planet God once created. But a lot of time passed between then and now. Humans grew up, finding their own ways towards both good and evil. And the minions of both forces spent time on Earth, finding that they actually liked these flawed, strange, willful beings, and didn’t so much see the point of blowing the whole thing up to settle some existential, cosmic bet made millennium before. Oh, and the anti-Christ is delivered to humanity, but to the wrong family, and becomes better at leading games of cowboys and indians in the forest rather than the forces of evil.
Reminiscent of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in tone, the book is also similar in complexity: the characters are over-blown and simple, though entertaining, the plot humorous but predictable, and the theme obvious. Obvious in that, well, it’s written by humans, modern humans who cherish our failings and see they could be strengths, secular humans who believe more in science than the wormwood predictions of a dusty, antiquated Bible. But hey! I liked Hitchhikers, and I liked this book, too. I’m simply saying that everything in the book will entertain, nothing will surprise, and that is the ultimate in…
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Vacation reading
Fiction, Repeated Author |