Lets Review Books: Good Omens

 

It's usually a bad sign to start out a book review talking about a different, better book than the one the review is supposed to be about, but that's what I'm doing. Just a quick note, if you haven't read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or its sequels you need to do so at once. Good Omens reminded me a lot of the Hitchhiker's series and while I'll say that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a better book, that really shouldn't be a knock on Good Omens. In fact, before reading Good Omens, I wouldn't have thought there was another book out there that was even really worth comparing to The Hitchhiker's Trilogy. But it turns out that there is.

Good Omens is the story of an angel and demon who are both tasked with general angel and demon work here on earth from their respective sides in the great celestial chess game between heaven and hell. And part of that work, at least on the side of the demon, is to look after the newly born Antichrist so that when he turns eleven, he can go about bringing forth the end of the world. Only said demon and his angel friend have decided that they quite like earth as it is. They've enjoyed their time here and would like to see it continue un-destroyed. However, a mix-up at the hospital leads to everyone assuming that the wrong baby is the antichrist and when that mistake is discovered everything goes off the rails.

We get a whole cast of characters including a witch hunter, an eleven year old boy with no idea of his true potential, a descendant of the only person to ever accurately predict the future, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse, War, Famine, Death and Pollution. (Pestilence decided to retire in the mid 30s when penicillin was getting big)

What makes the book so good (and what allows the comparison to the Hitchhiker's Trilogy) is it's fantastic humor. That's not really a surprise given that one half of the team that wrote this book is Terry Pratchett, best known for the fantasy/comedy series of Discworld. But the book's humor must be noted all the same. The two main characters (though main character might be a stretch seeing as how much time is give to each of the characters) of the Angel and Demon are fantastic both in the way that they play off of each other and the way that they react to their surroundings and circumstances.

Humor in writing is hard. Usually at best you will get something where a reader will understand why something is supposed to be funny, and acknowledge that it is in fact funny and it may even get a small smile of a reaction. Good Omens had me laugh out loud. Several times. It's not often a book can do that, and when one does, it deserves to be recommended to others.