Book Review - Good Omens

[cashew]

Grading explained:

A - Loved it. Want to re-read. Will recommend.

B - Pretty happy about reading it. No huge urge to re-read. Might recommend.

C - It's fine. Won't recommend.

D - Technically competent. Waste of time to read. Won't recommend.

F - Technically incompetent. Won't recommend.

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With that out of the way, tl;dr - Good Omens, grade C.

The long version...

Good Omens, the book, is a satirical take on the Apocalypse. After 6000 years spent on earth amongst humans, Demon Crowley and Angel Aziraphale are growing fond of humanity and would like to delay the Apocalypse as much as possible. Meanwhile, the factions of Heaven and Hell are determined to carry through with the ineffable. Thanks to a baby mix-up, both factions are trying to locate the misplaced Antichrist to kick start the Apocalypse and many unsuspecting humans have been dragged into the celestial/infernal high jinks.

Satire: For being satire, the book lacks bite when it comes to Christian theology. The main target of the authors' mockery is directed at bureaucracy and politicians and Americans in general. When it comes to British cultural bigotry and history of colonial imperialism, the authors avoid any cutting criticism. While the humor is often compared to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the book does not have the same edge when exposing the hypocrisy of British culture or religion in general.

Plot: The comedy of the concept is better than its execution. On paper, having a demon and angel working together to avoid the apocalypse should be hilarious. Unfortunately, the majority of the book is not focused on the interaction between said demon and angel (easily the funniest and most engaging parts of the book). Instead, the majority of the book is focused on the Antichrist living a normal life, being a nuisance to his neighbors and annoyingly bothersome the way children, especially little boys, are wont to be. In another part of the world, the four horsemen have traded horses for motorbikes and Pestilence retired after the discovery of penicillin, with Pollution taking over instead. Again, all very funny concepts, but the actual execution was slow, boring, and felt like two dudes making a bunch of in-jokes.

Characters: Again, the demon and angel partnership was easily the highlight of the book. The rest of the characters served as mere plot devices and vehicles for jokes. This would have been fine if the majority of the book was focused on Crowley and Aziraphale's personal interactions as they try to find a way to stop the apocalypse, but inexplicably, the authors decided, about half way through the story, to split the partners up and have them independently deal with the problems from their own factions (Hell and Heaven respectively). The focus then zeroed in on the frankly boring exploits of the Antichrist and his friends. Since the Antichrist and friends are just eleven-year-old children, who are also plainly average by design, the "adventures" and thought processes of these kids are deeply uninteresting. The rest of the supporting cast fares no better, as they serve only to be one-dimensional caricatures rather than exist as fully realized characters in a story.

Bias and Bigotry: The authors' own cultural bias and bigotry is nakedly on display. Perhaps it has to do with the book being rather old (by contemporary measures) and cultural sensitivity was not yet "a thing". A not insubstantial amount of the "humor" comes from playing up cultural stereotypes, often directed outward with the intent to put down rather than to eviscerate the existing assumptions. In addition, the decision to "write down accents phonetically" is quite cringe worthy. Since so much of the humor comes down to "ha ha they talk funny", rather than exposing the absurdity of human politics and cultural norms, the cultural insensitivity really takes away from books quite a bit. If you're not in on the joke, it's not going to be very funny.

In conclusion, the book is fine. There's nothing too outstanding and it has the same cultural pitfalls as other books of its time. The relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale is quite fun, but sadly there was too little of it to really elevate the work.

I'm genuinely confused by people who rank Good Omens as their favorite book of all time. The book seems solidly mediocre: the writing is technically competent and the language is snappy, but there's nothing particular outstanding about it.

Comments

[tanithryudo]

Are you reading this because of its slash fandom? IIRC I think there is also a TV show which I think is responsible more for the bulk of it.

> Pestilence retired after the discovery of penicillin

Y'know, this part feels dated nowadays. :p

[cashew]

I've been meaning to read the book since I saw it get super popular back on LJ (so around early 2000s), but the overtly religious stuff was like...meh. The recent fandom explosion made me think now's as good of a time as any to jump into the fray, and the angel x devil ship is quite fun on a relationship dynamic level, but the world building is kinda boring.

What this does make me want to do is start world building a fantasy universe myself. I just haven't quite placed my finger on how I want to build it...

And yeah, there's quite a bit of "aged like milk" on the pestilence bit. But I've noticed this is a tendency with Neil Gaiman, he doesn't deeply research the subjects he's messing around with all that thoroughly, so there's a lot of these niggling breaking of suspension of disbelief.