Good Omens, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett

It’s been a while since I read Good Omens, since I rather overread it when I was about seventeen. It kept my spirits up during boring free periods at school, and let me feel like I was really cool by reading it (as cool as I ever got at school, which wasn’t very, because I read too much and answered questions in class — you know the type). It was fun returning to it now: the jokes and puns are familiar by now, and I greeted each character like an old friend. I still adore Aziraphale and would now like to crochet him a sweater, and perhaps I would give Crowley a pot plant to terrify.

Generally, this is an inventive and funny novel, and I love the way they choose to portray angels, demons, and the general struggle between them. I also love the way they choose to wrap things up: Adam’s moment of choice is perfect, his decision, the small ways the world changes afterward. The two authors worked well together, for my money, and created something that is more than either of them would be apart. Some parts are obviously one or the other, but not many.

In the latest ebook edition, there’s also a short interview with them and a piece from each about how they met the other. They didn’t write those blind, without talking to the other, and so somehow those bits still have a bit of the style of the other, and they tend to agree on events. I love the image it gives of them, though, ringing each other up excitedly to contribute bits of the story — there’s a kind of joy in creation here that I find it impossible not to appreciate.

Maybe one thing I could do without is the constant harping on Aziraphale being ‘a Southern pansy’ and the like. It might be funny once or twice, illustrative of the type of person (angel) Aziraphale is, but this time through I started rolling my eyes at the gay jokes. Particularly as I recall Gaiman and Pratchett kind of denying the undercurrent between Crowley and Aziraphale that becomes completely apparent if you start taking notice of how often everyone assumes it.

It’s like someone said to me in university: “You know when people keep saying, ‘oh, if we keep doing this people will think we’re a couple?’ Most of the time, it really means, ‘I wish we were a couple and I want people to think that’.” Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship is highlighted so many times that that’s the effect, for me.

Rating: 5/5