Eschewed Obfuscation

End of my booklog-spam; let all rejoice!

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
412 pages (paperback)
Genre: Fiction/Fantasy

This has been on my to-read list, but it probably would have languished there for a while longer if I hadn't happened to spot it on A.'s bookshelf (due also to, I'll be reading A Great and Terrible Beauty soon). Bias calibration: out of Gaiman's works, I've only read Stardust; I adore Pratchett. That said, I'll be seeking out Gaiman's other novels that I've previously avoided because their descriptions didn't interest me.

The plot of Good Omens is extremely scatterbrained, but everything clicks together in the end. Be prepared to do some rifling (or better yet, rereading) for full understanding of the authors' genius. Some books are made to read only once; this one can and ought to be read hundreds of times. There are some absolutely hilarious lines, which I won't spoil by quoting out of context. I love Aziraphale and Crowley equally--fitting, isn't it? Death here, named Azrael, is similar to but different from Pratchett's Discworld Death.

I'm sure one can find fanatical fans; I'm not quite to that level, but I do wish they had made this into a movie instead of Stardust. Like Douglas Adams's A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this is a true cult classic and deserves the visual interpretation. (For the record, I haven't seen the film versions of either and could not finish the complete Hitchhiker's Guide without skimming.)