December « 2007 « transmission

Good Omens

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

This is one of my favourite books of all time.
It’s a brilliant play on the story of the horror film The Omen, which was about the coming of the anti-christ.
In Good Omens, though, the anti-christ ends up with the wrong family and the well meaning attempts of an angel and a demon to prevent his rise have absolutely no effect. A swirl of sub-plots contain a host of brilliant characters such as Anathema Device – the professional descendent of the only seer to have prophecies that were 100% correct, or Shadwell – the bitterly eccentric leader of the Witchfinder Army (current corps – 2 members), and his well meaning but drippy recruit Newton Pulsifer.
This book is funny, insightful, full of great characters and is a totally great read.
It’s on my ‘give this book to everyone I know and force them to read it list’ – it’s that good.
In an interesting sidenote it would appear that I own quite an unusual edition of the book. Nice to know!