Quick what is your favorite book? Did one pop into your mind immediately or did you need to add a few qualifying adjectives to narrow it down to just one title?
Good Omens is usually my go-to answer when someone asks me what my favorite book is. No book is my favorite, as in preferred above all else, but Good Omens is closest. It holds a special place in my heart for being the tome that was my entry into a better class of fantasy/science fiction. I re-read it every couple of years or so and am reminded how delightfully absurd yet reassuring it is. This year’s re-reading was especially poignant as I haven’t quite been able to start reading the last novel of Mr. Pratchett’s before he passed. Maybe after I re-read everything he has written and have a good cry, then I can move on.
This book is written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, although to be honest, it’s always felt like Terry’s book that Neil got to add in a few sentences here and there. The book was written rather early in their careers so it’s not the best work of either, but it is so damn delightful.
Primarily it is the tale of the birth of the anti-christ and the coming of the apocalypse. If the end of the world happened during the late 1980s and the key players were reserved British citizens. It’s a world where the divine is bumbling but mostly good natured, the worst of human atrocities are distasteful to demons and really wouldn’t it be better to keep the status quo so as to not upset the whales?
Both authors have written other series where the character of “Death” is sympathetic and downright adorable. So they are well equipped to poke fun at that specific brand of doom that was pervasive in pop culture during the Regan/Thatcher years. All the characters are immensely likable, everything turns out alright in the end and of course no dogs are harmed or really even inconvenienced during the end of the world. In fact a few Japanese whaling ships get what’s coming to them on a cosmic level.
Read this book if you need a reminder that everything, even now with Trump leading in the polls, is going to turn out alright. If only because humanity is really just too distracted and incompetent at a basic level to ever really bring about total destruction.