Good Omens

About six months ago I posted a list of ten books that had affected me, one of which was Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. With the recent passing of Sir Terry from this mortal coil to the etheric whisper of internet headers, I decided that I wanted to hit the canon again, and to start with one of my favourites.

At some basic level, Good Omens is a pastiche of The Omen (the original one,) complete with a Satanic conspiracy replacing the son of a US ambassador with the antichrist, filtered through a comedy of errors that is forever hovering one legs akimbo sight gag from a Carry On movie. An angel and a demon, both of whom have gone rather native, strive to save the world, while a moment of distraction leaves the antichrist to grow up as a perfectly normal boy. As the preordained moment approaches, the forces of Heaven and Hell, of England's once-proud Witchfinder Army, and of the well-informed descendants of Cromwellian prophetess Agnes Nutter, descend on the Oxfordshire village of Tadfield to do battle (because anyone who considers themselves to be a force is inevitably looking for a fight.)

Pratchett and Gaiman occasionally talked about a sequel - the title 668: The Neighbour of the Beast was touted sometimes - but in the end it never happened; partly because Gaiman moved full-time to the states, and partly because they never settled on the story. I'm rather glad of that, because Good Omens is something of a perfect storm, uniting two authors who were really just getting started in such as way that I believe it tempered both of their styles and signaled a sea-change in their individual writing, while at the same time producing something priceless.

Seriously; about 70% of all images resulting from a search for
'Good Omens' returns fan art of Aziraphael and Crowley, and
perhaps a quarter of that is explicitly shippy. I'm sure you
wouldn't have to look far to find one of those intertwining wing
and no clothes poses so popular with people who ship winged
humanoids and have any ounce of artistic ability.

Good Omens is a very character-driven apocalyptic narrative, and the characters are rather wonderful, from Adam's small and disorganised 'pack of ringleaders' to the bikers of the Apocalypse, and of course the fandom's favourite ship, Crowley and Aziraphael*. The authors also manage to slip in some social commentary - much of it a little dated now** - and even to get in a dig at people who wear sunglasses when it's dark, which in 1990 was only just starting to be a thing.

It is also unashamedly funny and, and this is important, doesn't pretend not to be or to have been during the big, dramatic denouement. It doesn't go all grimdark, and yet manages to have a sense of peril for characters the reader has grown to like. It may also count as one of the first truly transatlantic novels, its wry footnotes peppered with explanatory notes for the American reader which poke fun at the American and British people in more or less equal part.

In case I'm being too oblique, I love this book: always have done, still do. The only disappointment for me on this reading was the audiobook version I switched too while I was walking. It wasn't bad, but they did a Radio 4 adaptation just before Christmas*** and so I was disappointed to only get the one voice. All in all, I think I'm more of an audio play kind of guy.

* Because nothing gets shippers hot for a couple more than adversity, and what greater adversity can there be than explicitly stating that they are sexless beings? For myself I can see the sense behind the pairing, but they are more of an old married couple, rather than a white hot sexy pairing.
** Similarly, any technical references are pretty antiquated, from the wonder of a car with a phone in to printed manuals, and British fast food has come a long way since 1990.
*** Which is well worth checking out.