412 pages
English language
Published Jan. 6, 2007
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch is a 1990 novel written as a collaboration between the English authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.The book is a comedy about the birth of the son of Satan and the coming of the End Times. There are attempts by the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley to sabotage the coming of the end times, having grown accustomed to their comfortable surroundings in England. One subplot features a mixup at the small country hospital on the day of birth and the growth of the Antichrist, Adam, who grows up with the wrong family, in the wrong country village. Another subplot concerns the summoning of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, each a big personality in their own right. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 68 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
I read this about 20 years ago and liked it then, so I thought I'd give it a re-read. It's nothing like I remember.
A fun book to read that gives a humorous spin on the "end of the world" type of story. The story starts with two supernatural characters, the angel, Aziraphale, and the demon, Crowley, meeting after Adam and Eve are evicted from the Garden of Eden. As the years past, they find they like each other and come to a gentlemen's agreement that sees them doing enough to please their respective authorities (Heaven and Hell), while keeping the peace between themselves.
But it comes to an end when Crowley find he has to deliver the anti-Christ to a devilish nunnery, where the anti-Christ is to be swapped with another baby and then raised in the ways of evil (or good) until he is ready to end the world. But things go wrong when the wrong babies were swapped (without Crowley's knowledge). Years later, just days before the end of the world …
A fun book to read that gives a humorous spin on the "end of the world" type of story. The story starts with two supernatural characters, the angel, Aziraphale, and the demon, Crowley, meeting after Adam and Eve are evicted from the Garden of Eden. As the years past, they find they like each other and come to a gentlemen's agreement that sees them doing enough to please their respective authorities (Heaven and Hell), while keeping the peace between themselves.
But it comes to an end when Crowley find he has to deliver the anti-Christ to a devilish nunnery, where the anti-Christ is to be swapped with another baby and then raised in the ways of evil (or good) until he is ready to end the world. But things go wrong when the wrong babies were swapped (without Crowley's knowledge). Years later, just days before the end of the world is due, the mistake is discovered and now both Aziraphale and Crowley desperately hunt for the real anti-Christ in the hope of stopping him, for both have grown rather fond of the world as it is and there is no telling what an anti-Christ that wasn't 'raised properly' might do.
While that is happening, other supernatural events being to take place. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse begin to gather (with one being humorously replaced by another due to an advancement by mankind). A strange book, "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch" is lost and found and shown, unlike other books filled with prophecies, to be actually able to predict the future: only as viewed by a witch from the past, so the descriptions of future events are rather unusual. It is also rather disorganized.
So things come to a climax when the anti-Christ gets revealed and all the characters converge on a nice little spot in England in order to ensure or prevent the end of the world from happening.
Written by two authors well known from their supernatural and humorous fiction, this is a fun book to read, filled with interesting characters and situations that should get quite a few chuckles out of the reader.
