Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman [February/06]

What is there to say about this book other than: Terry Pratchett. He is such a brilliant author, I really need to read more of him! This was the fist time I had ever read Neil Gaiman, though, so I picked up a novel by him on his own to get a taste of him. I just have not read it yet. Anyways, this book, in true Pratchett fashion, takes the modern opinions held about the Apocolypse and flips them all around. It is hard to say exactly what he meant to do with this, but to my eyes it seems like they were trying to make fun of the Bible. Not because they are against religion, exactly, but because no one knows for sure exactly what will happen if the world were to end. The Bible was written many many years ago, so there has been a lot of changes since then. For example, there are supposed to be the Four Horseman of the Apocolypse. In Pratchett and Gaiman's novel, the horseman ride motorcycles. That is not exactly going against the Bible, it is just pointing out that horses are not as common anymore.

It is really is an eye-opening book, as it is actually both a novel and a true story, although not true at the same time. You see in the novel, there is a woman who writes a Bible of sorts that predicts the outcome of the world for many generations. She was considered a witch, and actually burned for this belief, but not before she created this book. In the novel, what she predicted comes to play. It is through a very distant granddaughter that we learn that what she thought actually was happening. She may not have had exact dates for when the events were going to take place, but this did not change the fact that she knew they were going to come into play. In some cases, she has it down to the details. Her family has spent generations translating her beliefs and more often than not the events are happening before they find the pertaining event in her book.

I just adore Pratchett because his novels are quite humourous, but at the same time they satirize society and aspects of the society in a way that Pratchett can get his beliefs about them across. This novel has so many in it that it would likely take several read throughs for one reader to get all of them. It may seem about the Apocolypse, but there are many other things at play in the novel. I will not list them here, I will leave you to find them out for yourself because this is a book I STRONGLY RECOMMEND!!!!!

4.5/5