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THE NICE AND ACCURATE PROPHECIES OF AGNES NUTTER, WITCH (DISCWORLD)

by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 29, 1990

This publisher's first novel is a gay, demented eschatological farce in which the Antichrist doesn't really have his heart in it. Eleven years before the end of the world foretold by accurate but obscure Agnes Nutter's prophecies, Sister Mary Loquacious—the Satanist charged with switching the infant Antichrist with another infant—flubs the job when a third infant is introduced into the scenario, and the Lord of Darkness gets shunted aside in favor of Adam Young, who grows into boyhood with an uncomfortable sense of mission. Awaited with fear by angelic Aziraphale and demonic Crowley—friendly rivals who don't want their worldly tug-of-war to end—with zealous hatred by Witchfinder Sgt. Shadwell and harlot-masseuse-medium Madame Tracy, and with ecstatic anticipation by latter-day Nutterite Anathema Device and Newton Pulsifer, who bounces from Shadwell's employ into Anathema's bed, the apocalypse looms—dripping with throwaway allusions, giggly footnotes, and broad swipes at the decline of the West. It's the ultimate Saturday night bummer, fueled by a miraculous thousand-ton theft of nuclear fuel and the determination of Adam's gang Them to follow the trail of the Four Bikers of the Apocalypse. Hilariously naughty, and just what you'd expect from a collaboration between comics-veteran Gaiman and fantasist Pratchett ( Strata , 1981; The Light Fantastic , 1983). A best-seller in England, and a book to watch here. It could catch on with the Douglas Adams crowd.

Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1990

ISBN: 0552137030

Page Count: 404

Publisher: Workman

Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1990

SCIENCE FICTION

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BOOK REVIEW

by Dan Watters & Neil Gaiman ; illustrated by Max Fiumara & Sebastian Fiumara

by Si Spurrier & Neil Gaiman ; illustrated by Bilquis Evely

by Neil Gaiman

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

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by Max Brooks

DARK MATTER

by Blake Crouch ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 26, 2016

Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.

A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.

Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.

Pub Date: July 26, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION | THRILLER | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION | TECHNICAL & MEDICAL THRILLER

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by Blake Crouch

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By Neil Gaiman, A Comedic, Apocalyptic, Wonderful, Beloved Novel

I recently found myself wanting some sort of inspiration (and faced with a lengthy plane flight). And there’s something about a really well told and solidly constructed book that just feels satisfying . It seemed like a good time, then, to re-read Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens .

Good Omens Film Adapation

Update: Good Omens has been developed into a 6-episode series on Amazon, released May 31, 2019. You can watch it here .

“I mean, pointing out the Tree and saying ‘Don’t Touch’ in big letters. Not very subtle, is it? I mean, why not put it on top of a high mountain or a long way off? Makes you wonder what He’s really planning.”

Plot Summary

For the Detailed Plot Summary, click here or scroll all the way down .

In Good Omens, the anti-Christ has been born, which means the end of times is coming soon. However, Crowley, a demon, and Aziraphale, an angel, have each spent a lot of time on earth and would prefer not to see it destroyed.

So, Crowley and Aziraphale decide to work together to prevent the apocalypse. Their plan is to influence the upbringing of the newly-born anti-Christ (Spawn of Satan), in an attempt to thwart the anti-Christ’s role in the apocalypse.

Like Paradise Lost , the book opens with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. It then jumps forward in time to the birth of the Anti-Christ. His presence on Earth indicates to the forces of Heaven and Hell that the apocalypse “is nigh,” as the book states, and that the Armageddon will culminate in the ultimate battle between good and evil on earth.

These events, however, had been foretold by a witch hundreds of years ago, giving the residents on Earth a sliver of opportunity to stop the impending apocalypse, in the face of powers of Heaven and Hell who have been waiting millennia for a battle both powers are eager to engage in.

Aziraphale and Crowley in the Amazon adaptation

Book Review

Good Omens is a comedic, apocalyptic, satirical novel that is much loved by many. The concept is high-brow, but the comedy in it is decidedly low-brow. It traverses the same territory as John Milton’s Paradise Lost (the fall of man and the battle between Good and Evil) and the main story arc is the impending Armageddon.

Meanwhile, the plot is helped along by the Anti-Christ, the Anti-Christ’s gang of childhood friends, the Four Horsemen, a duo of Witchhunters, a gang of bikers, an angel, a fallen angel, the last remaining descendant of a soothsayer and a whole host of other characters.

Somehow, this mishmosh of characters and zany plot come together to form a book that is very coherent, surprisingly thoughtful, and very funny.

Free Will in Good Omens

The inquiry on which the story implicitly builds is biblical (though it’s message can be appreciated by almost anyone, I think) – if God exists and has a plan, where does free will come in? And why do we have or want free will, and where does it fit into God’s plan?

Good Omens draws from Paradise Lost’s answer to this question: that the powers of Hell are angels who have fallen from Heaven; that the pull between Heaven and Hell are necessary for there to be free will; to truly have free will means that we have the power to use it, poorly if we choose; that Earth was set in motion as a battle between between the two ultimate powers that be; and good and bad are a balance, they enhance one another, and the price we pay for the pleasures and sorrows of free will is that free will requires us to make difficult decisions.

At its heart, Good Omens is a book about the apocalypse for optimists – its message is a positive one, but almost an admonishment as well. Small actions, good or bad, have resounding effects. And with free will, comes responsibility over our actions.

At the end of the book, the power to re-create the world lies in the hands of one boy:

“Think of all the things you could do! Good things!” “Like what?” said Adam suspiciously. “Well…you could bring all the whales back, to start with.” He put his head on one side, “An’ that’d stop people killing them, would it?” She hesitated. It would have been nice to say yes. “An’ if people do start killing ‘em, what would you ask me to do about ‘em?” said Adam. “No. I reckon I’m getting the hang of this now. Once I start messing around like that, there’d be no stoppin’ it. Seems to be the only sensible thing is for people to know if they kill a whale, they’ve got a dead whale.”

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are both primarily science fiction writers – Pratchett moreso than Gaiman – but I’m not much of a science fiction fan, and I love this book.

Terry Pratchett is a wonderful constructor of worlds – he is the author of the Discworld stories and has an amazing grasp of splicing together an internal logic for worlds he draws out of thin air.

Neil Gaiman, I think, brings the heart component to the story. I think his work has an empathy, tenderness and emotional resonance that makes him a very beloved writer. Separately, they are both very good. Together, they are sort of wonderful.

Terry Pratchett passed away in 2014, and there’s a wonderful obituary written by Neil Gaiman that I highly recommend reading if you’re a fan of either of them.

Read it or Skip it?

Good Omens is one of my favorite books of all time, so I’m a little biased when I recommend this book to others. It’s thoughtful and hilarious at the same time, which I find delightful.

It’s very light-hearted and silly in its tone, but asking its readers to consider some serious topics. It is in some ways respectful of Christian ideals, while at the same time questioning anyone’s ability to point to certain things and state what God would or would not have wanted.

I’m a non-Christian, but I think it’s a book that almost anyone with the least bit of curiosity about the world could enjoy or at least appreciate. (And the novel’s immense popularity reflects that, so this is not really a particularly earth-shattering conclusion.) It is also very funny; I’m probably making the book sound much more serious than it is. If you haven’t read it, you should. Happy 2015!

See Good Omens on Amazon .

Detailed Book Summary (Spoilers)

In the beginning, eleven years ago.

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Neil Gaiman is one of my favourite authors and I love this book! Nice review too! I like your blog so I nominated you for the Versatile Blogger Award! Check the post on my blog for details

aeriko001 @ The Reading Armchair

Sorry, I know this is an older post, but I just finished this book and loved it!!! I hadn’t really considered your point, that the book demonstrates the weight of free will. I just enjoyed the way they use absurdity to make you question everything. Again, I know this is an old post, so it’s okay if you don’t see this, but if you’re interested in reading my review of Good Omens, it can be found at my blog, meganwriteseverything.wordpress.com.

Hi Megan, I love when people drop by my older posts! I’ll definitely take a look at your review as well. Happy reading! :)

This is one of my favorite books and I can’t wait for the series!

It’s great that you’re finding deep connections and interpretations within “Good Omens”! One of the strengths of the story is its ability to spark different perspectives and discussions about its characters and themes. Your interpretation is a valid and interesting way to look at the characters of Aziraphale and Crowley, seeing them as reflections or representations of greater mythological figures.

Here’s a brief summary of your perspective and the traditional interpretations:

1. **Aziraphale**: – **Your View**: You see Aziraphale as potentially connected to Michael, the archangel, due to the flaming sword and the angelic role. – **Traditional Interpretation**: Aziraphale is an original character who is an angel with a distinct personality, representing goodness but with a love for human culture and experiences.

2. **Crowley**: – **Your View**: You see Crowley as connected to Lucifer, the fallen angel, due to his role as the tempter in the Garden of Eden and his rebellious nature. – **Traditional Interpretation**: Crowley is an original character who is a lesser demon, distinct from Lucifer, with a unique personality that blends charm, rebellion, and a love for the human world.

Your perspective adds depth to the narrative by drawing parallels with traditional mythological and religious figures, enriching the viewing or reading experience. This approach highlights the flexibility and richness of Gaiman and Pratchett’s storytelling, allowing for multiple layers of interpretation.

Whether the creators intended these connections explicitly or left them as subtle nods, your interpretation is a testament to the enduring power of myth and the creativity of the authors. Engaging with the story in this way allows for a richer understanding and appreciation of its themes and characters.

Thank you for sharing your insights! It’s always fascinating to explore the different ways a story can be understood and appreciated.

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Book Review

Good omens: the nice and accurate prophecies of agnes nutter, witch.

• Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
• Fantasy , Humor , Satire

Readability Age Range

• Originally published by Gollancz (U.K.) and Workman (U.S.) in 1990, the edition reviewed was published by Harper and William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Year Published

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine .

Plot Summary

Aziraphale and Crowley go way back. Both played important roles in the Garden of Eden on the day of the first sin. Aziraphale was the angel holding the flaming sword. Crowley was the serpent. Since then, both have enjoyed thousands of years stationed on earth. They’ve known each other for so long, they’ve become friends. They sometimes drink together and share information that may serve each of them well in their jobs. Both find the things of earth far more stimulating and entertaining than the harps and pitchforks of their homelands. They’re alarmed when they learn the Apocalypse is at hand. They decide they must work together to save the world.

At an earlier time, Crowley learns about the Devil’s plan to swap his own child (the Antichrist) with a human baby. The Antichrist is supposed to be switched with an American diplomat’s baby, but a ditsy satanist nurse botches the job. Satan’s child ends up in an average family.

For 11 years, Crowley and Aziraphale keep a close eye on the boy they think is the Antichrist and do all they can to thwart the coming of the Apocalypse. When they discover their error, they quickly retrace their steps to the hospital where the switch took place. Coincidentally, they give a ride to a stranded young woman named Anathema, who is the descendant of an 18th-century witch named Agnes Nutter.

Before Agnes was burned at the stake, she wrote a book of prophesies that have repeatedly proved true. Anathema has been faithfully following these prophesies, especially as she sees more of them coming to pass in recent days. She accidentally leaves the book in Crowley’s car.

Witch hunters, psychics, newscasters and doomsday fanatics begin emerging as signs increasingly point to the Apocalypse. Adam Young, the boy who is actually Satan’s son, begins to feel a strange sense of power and leadership. He tells his nervous young friends his plans for the future. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse, who are actually bikers and include one woman, begin their ride.

A witch hunter named Shadwell discovers Aziraphale has Agnes Nutter’s prophesy book. Aziraphale and Shadwell, along with Shadwell’s psychic neighbor, Madame Tracy, follow clues to the town of Tadfield where Adam Young lives. Crowley, stuck on the freeway in his mint-condition Bentley, destroys the car to get to Tadfield. Anathema, Newt (Shadwell’s apprentice) and the horsemen head there as well.

Adam has told his friends which parts of the world they will rule once he takes over. But then the boy realizes he will never get to enjoy the wonders of his childhood if he allows all of this to happen. He and his friends head for a nearby military base to explain why the world is in chaos and get help.

They and the other characters converge at the base. The horsemen have already begun to decimate the planet. Beelzebub and the Metatron (a spokesperson for God) appear, and Adam explains he doesn’t want the world to end.

The Metatron tells Adam that Armageddon must happen now, and this temporary inconvenience will be for the ultimate good. The Metatron and Beelzebub are confused by Adam’s reticence and try to convince him he can’t alter these plans. Aziraphale and Crowley challenge the reasoning of the Metatron and Beelzebub and engage in a battle of semantics.

The Metatron contends God does not play games with His loyal servants, and Crowly says the Metatron clearly hasn’t been paying attention if he believes that. Stumped, the Metatron and Beelzebub return to their respective places to seek further instructions. Adam has saved the world, for now.

Life returns to normal. Anathema receives a copy of Agnes’ second book of prophecies but decides not to read it. Shadwell and Madame Tracy become a couple. Crowley and Aziraphale return to their meetups. Adam, living as a normal child again, sneaks out after being grounded.

Christian Beliefs

Other belief systems.

The author depicts God as a distant entity playing a cosmic game of chess with the universe and its inhabitants. Aziraphale, heaven’s representative on earth, lies, curses, learns to dance in a gentlemen’s club and is often mistaken for a gay man by others. He likes earth and is unable or unwilling to defend God’s plans or character.

Whenever Aziraphale can’t answer Crowley’s difficult existential questions, he lamely falls back on the word ineffable to say it just can’t be explained. He’s disappointed in his people (God and the heavenly beings) because they want the Apocalypse to happen. He collects old books, including Bibles with typos.

Even after angering the leaders of hell, Crowley feels certain he will survive because the universe will look after him. Crowley rails on satanists because he finds many of them embarrassingly enthusiastic and thinks their ritualistic methods unnecessary. He contends that the Devil is rarely at fault for what happens on earth. Hell isn’t especially full of evil, just as heaven isn’t full of goodness. They are just two sides on a cosmic chessboard.

True evil and true goodness are found in the human mind. Crowley says he believes the biggest battle will be one where heaven and hell fight together against humans. He further assaults the idea of a loving God by suggesting God was toying with people when He put forbidden fruit in the garden. Telling inquisitive people not to eat it was a trick to make them do just that.

Crowley doesn’t do much to make trouble for humans because he believes they do that well enough on their own. Crowley and Aziraphale discuss their roles in the Garden of Eden. Both feel God overreacted to humanity’s “first offense,” and Crowley wonders why it’s so bad not to know the difference between good and evil.

Adam Young and his friends form opinions on witches based on things they’ve heard in Bible class or read in books. They play witch hunters and pretend to torture a compliant younger girl. Adam is critical of a God who would create people and then get upset with them because they act like people. He further asserts that if people weren’t told everything is sorted out after death, maybe they would spend more time sorting things out while they’re alive.

As Adam sneaks out after his grounding, he thinks there was never an apple that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into for eating it. Psychics, witches, witch hunters, satanists, voodoo practitioners, doomsday enthusiasts and other extremists abound. Madams use crystal balls and psychics talk about people’s auras. Demons pledge their allegiance to Satan, and a British freeway forms a symbol that translates into “Hail the great beast.”

A group of satanist nuns helps switch the babies in the hospital so Satan’s son can stealthily enter the human race. A nanny named Ashtoreth is sent to train the boy people think is Satan’s son. She teaches him nursery rhymes that end with the Devil conquering, virgins being violated and heaps of dead bodies appearing.

A witch hunter named Shadwell says the churches can’t be relied on to stamp out the evil one. If they did overcome him, they’d be out of a job. Newt tries to believe in God, along with other things, such as atheism, politics and the universe. Nothing gives him the dramatic experience he desires to convince him.

Anathema claims Agnes didn’t see the future but remembered it. A sincere but hokey televangelist sings absurd, campy songs on his show. He is preaching a fire-and-brimstone sermon when the Devil begins speaking through him. The Devil says heaven is spreading propaganda by saying it will win the celestial war and that people might as well send money to satanists so they have an equal chance of coming out on top.

A biker had to spend three months living in a hotel where all he had to read was a Gideon Bible. Now he’s a whiz at Bible trivia. After the failed Apocalypse, bigwigs in heaven and hell are pretending nothing happened.

Authority Roles

Crowley and Aziraphale both prefer earth to their places of origin and strive to keep it going. Both come across as thinkers who are much savvier and more complex than their masters. God is portrayed as someone without personality. He doesn’t really like the world but toys with the universe for his own gratification. At best, he is uninvolved in people’s daily lives. At worst, he is vengeful and manipulative.

Profanity & Violence

The Lord’s name is used in vain. Hell is used often, both as a location and a profanity. The words d–n , s— , b–ch , p–ck , douchbag , b–tard , screw , p—ed and the f-word appear. Shadwell repeatedly discusses the number of the Antichrist’s nipples.

Sexual Content

Most people think Aziraphale is gay, and the word faggot appears. Bestiality and orgasms are mentioned. Madame Tracy holds seances and entertains men, prompting Shadwell to call her names like whore of Babylon . Men sometimes telephone and ask her what she’s wearing. Newt begins to have sexual thoughts about Anathema. They soon have sex, as predicted in Agnes Nutter’s book. Madame Tracy decorates her place in erotic ways reminiscent of 1950s and ’60s sex kittens.

Discussion Topics

Additional comments.

Miniseries Tie-In: Producers often use a book as a springboard for a movie or miniseries ideas or to earn a specific rating. Because of this, a miniseries may differ from the novel. To better understand how this book and the miniseries differ, compare this book review with Plugged In’s movie review for Good Omens .

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

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Good Omens Makes for a Cheerful Apocalypse

There are a lot of pitfalls for a TV adaptation of a book: translating the characters onto the screen doesn’t always go the way it should; finding ways to replicate a book character’s interiority (this is where the final season of Game of Thrones failed); bulking up or trimming down various plots as needed; rebalancing various characters’ roles to improve on the original (see: The Magicians ).

In the case of Good Omens , a new Amazon miniseries based on the Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett book of the same name, one of the trickiest elements of adaptation works astonishingly well. The experience of reading Good Omens, maybe first and most intensely, is the sense of its voice. A chipper, breezy, insouciant, and simultaneously dire sense of humor carries through the book’s silly story about the apocalypse, and the combination of lightness and darkness in its tone is an impressively fitting match for a book about an angel and a demon who become friends. It’s a narrator’s voice, a very self-consciously booky voice, full of self-satisfied vocabulary and jokes about the nature of text. Good Omens is a book about books — specifically, about the Bible and a goofy, made-up prophetical text called The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch — and the story, which is ostensibly about good and evil and humanity and the end of the world, is more specifically about the way we interpret and fail to interpret texts.

That premise presents a high degree of difficulty, adaptation-wise. Narrator voice is always hard in TV; so few series can nail voice-over in a way that doesn’t feel clunky, and the process of figuring out how to translate style in language into a similar style of TV storytelling is even harder. What exactly is the visual version of a prose style that goes, “God does not play dice with the universe; he plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time ”? What does it look like to tell a story about a fallen angel who “did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards”? Without those smirking, smug, delicious capitals in “Saunter Vaguely Downwards,” that phrase is only half as funny. What do smug capital letters look like as a style of TV?

The answer, in this adaptation, is visual busyness, cute signpost markers, and stamped-on images to help denote dates and locations, and a hefty dose of a literal Voice of God as a narrative through line. (God, in this case, is played by Frances McDormand.) Much of the original dialogue has been transplanted into the script, and the series’ brisk, snappy editing style — specifically its whooshing transitions from one scene to the next — go a long way toward replicating and re-creating the book’s wry tone. It is self-consciously constructed as a silly, constructed thing. When you watch the series, which premieres on Friday, you get a visual version of the book’s gleeful wordiness. That’s no small feat.

The other major success of the series is its two lead characters, the good angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and the bad angel Crowley (David Tennant). Aziraphale is a plummy, upper-class gentleman; a delicious, fragile collection of nervous chuckles, aristocratic hobbies, and restrained emotion. Crowley, equipped as he is with Tennant’s long spidery legs, is every inch the Fallen Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards. He slouches across the screen, sneering and cocking one eyebrow and blasting Queen from his car speakers. Together, he and Aziraphale have all the zinging chemistry of a deeply felt if emotionally avoidant male friendship, and their bond gets more fun the more they realize that they, themselves, don’t actually understand what makes one thing good and another thing evil. Good Omens works best when Tennant and Sheen are both onscreen, politely deferring to one another about how to deal with the end times.

Things do get wobblier when Good Omens turns to the side characters. They are plentiful, but unevenly characterized. There’s a witch named Anathema Device (Adria Arjona), a witch-hunter called Newton Pulsifer (Jack Whitehall), a variety of other demons and angels (most notably Jon Hamm as Gabriel and Anna Maxwell Martin as Beelzebub), and delightful, small appearances by Nick Offerman, Bill Paterson, Michael McKean, and Miranda Richardson, among many others. It is a big, exciting cast full of characters with a lot of possibilities, but none of them leap to life with quite the same distinctiveness as Aziraphale and Crowley.

That’s especially notable when it comes to Adam (Sam Taylor Buck), a young boy who’s actually Satan Incarnate, meant to trigger the end of the world. He sits at the center of all the machinations about how the apocalypse plays out, but Good Omens doesn’t have much of a grasp of who he is, and does very little with his charming kid friends beyond giving them cute introductions. Anathema is similarly underdeveloped, and the obligatory Four Horsemen (Brian Cox, Mireille Enos, Lourdes Faberes, Yusuf Gatewood) do remarkably little marauding given their legendary, apocalypse-signifying, terror-inducing status.

The fact that the minor characters are so much weaker than the two leads unbalances the ending a little. The original Good Omens book was co-written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett; Pratchett sadly died in 2015 , but Gaiman was significantly involved in the adaptation, including writing the screenplay. The ending of Good Omens is a classic Pratchett-esque mechanism, familiar to any readers of his massive Discworld series — many pieces, most of them either unrelated or held together by only the most tenuous threads, suddenly bump and stumble and collide into one another to make an ending. When it works, it feels like watching many disparate fictional parts suddenly come together to make a Rube Goldberg machine, with everything neatly sliding into place and the conclusion rolling along smoothly. But in order to make it work, each piece already needs to have some meaning of its own. Each character has to stand on their own before they can get pieced together into the bigger structure. It’s what makes the ending feel transformative rather than rote.

Good Omens does not quite succeed at this. Even though the major pieces are there — Aziraphale, Crowley, Satan, God, apocalypse — the minor bits aren’t magical enough on their own. It doesn’t quite pull together as a great, glorious, goofy Almighty plan. But it is still fun, and stylish, and it has enough of the book’s original quirky spark to feel worthwhile.

• terry pratchett
• neil gaiman
• michael sheen
• david tennant

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The Cult Classic Full of Colorful Characters That Will Restore Your Faith In Good

Books, like people, come in and out of our lives at certain times and always for a specific purpose. Unfortunately, books aren’t sentient creatures (yet), and sometimes their timing is off. Occasionally you have to give a book—or a person—a second chance at a later time to fully appreciate what they’re offering.

This has happened to me several times in my life with a variety of books, some of which I’ve mentioned in earlier Off the Shelf reviews . My most recent example of revisiting an old book and realizing, Oh, this actually means something to me now, is GOOD OMENS by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

I first read this cult classic about an angel and a demon incompetently attempting to prevent Armageddon several years ago and found it amusing, but quickly moved on. Years passed and I heard Amazon Prime was adapting GOOD OMENS and had to admit that, with Michael Sheen and David Tennant as angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley, respectively, it had perfect casting. On a visit home, I impulsively put it on while searching for something to watch with my mom. Neither of us expected to fall in love.

Finishing the miniseries in record time, I was reintroduced to these colorful characters and had the urge to revisit the novel. I dug up my old e-reader, plugged it in, and immediately devoured the novel in a few days. I realized something while reading this fanciful tale of doomsday, the Antichrist, witchcraft, and Queen—there wasn’t anything wrong with GOOD OMENS when I first read it. It was simply the wrong time in my life to truly appreciate it.

When I first read this novel about the apocalypse, I was in the beginning of what felt like my own personal end of the world. I was dealing with the fact that I was a recent (and jobless) graduate, and my father had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. I found myself facing an uncertain future and grappling with my own faith. The spiritual hijinks of Aziraphale, Crowley, and the other colorful characters of this witty novel paled in comparison to what I was dealing with in my own life.

I used to think that books were an escape from reality; it turns out that we bring our own experiences to every story we read. Watching and rereading GOOD OMENS now, years after grappling with the hardest experience of my life, I was finally able to understand and appreciate Aziraphale and Crowley and their intense love for one another and this complicated, remarkable, and beautiful world.

Even when Aziraphale and Crowley lament the natural ability of humans to bring about their own doom, they find something in them worth loving, making GOOD OMENS one of the most optimistic and simply happy books you’ll ever read. Whether or not you believe in angels, demons, witches, Armageddon, hell hounds, or the kraken, you’ll find your faith restored by GOOD OMENS.

According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . . Naughty, funny, wacky and irreverent, this is a wonderful new side of Gaiman.

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Exploring the fantastic and finding magic in everyday life.

Book Review: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

How perfect is this? A book by two of my favorite authors which was later made into a TV series starring two of my favorite actors. It’s like a gift from the universe specially made for me. And even better, it’s pretty amazing.

There is a lot going in in Good Omens. We have three distinct story lines following the key players. First, there’s main story of how an angel and a demon are trying to prevent the apocalypse because frankly life in the 20th century is everything they’d ever want it to be and they would rather not see it end.

Then, there’s the story of the boy who is supposed to be the Antichrist and bring about the apocalypse.

There’s also a thread of the story as we watch the four horsemen of the apocalypse organize themselves and set things into motion.

Lastly, I’m going to lump together the characters revolving around the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, a book of prophecies which is distinct from other books of prophecies for one reason alone – It’s 100% accurate, this includes the descendant of Agnes, Anathema Device (best name for a character, ever) Newton Pulsifer, and Witchfinder Sergent Shadwell.

We see the book in three main time periods; the events surrounding the placement of the baby Antichrist into a suitable family; the key points of the boy’s growing up when both the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley work to ensure he’s given a proper education so when the time comes for the apocalypse, he’s ready; and then the time when the apocalypse is supposed to happen.

Like I said, there’s a lot going on here.

The one thing that I always find delightful in Pratchett’s books is his use of distinct and likable characters. We see loads of this here. The cast is absolutely massive in this book and yet each character is built in such a way that they walk fully formed off of the page. Take the demon Crowley, for example. He could have been played like a stereotypical villain and not been anything more than that. Instead, we have a man who loves his vintage Bentley (even if every cassette he tries to play in it in time turns into a Queen album), raises houseplants like children (which he sacrifices regularly to threaten the others to grow better, he is a demon after all), and created the M25 just to annoy humans.

Then, we mix all these amazing characters into a story line that’s both so complicated and yet so simple which screams iconic Gaiman.

It’s a hard combination to pull off and yet, for me, was 100% successful in creating an delightful romp through something running just parallel enough to the truth that it can be enjoyed first while reading, but also again as you think about all the bits and how they fit together.

Recommendations

If you’re already a fan of Pratchett and Gaiman you’ll already know that they both love to walk on the edge of the acceptable and explore what is considered right and wrong and why. That said, if reading about the Antichrist as a very real person, and worse, a child, makes you a little squeamish, then this whole book might be a little too much for comfort.

Age recommendations – I’d stick this one to adult readers and the older teenagers they let play. Besides the playful religious overtones ranging into the questionable at times, there only a sprinkling of curse words, I think f*^# is said once, and the violence and romantic content is present but subdued. The reason I recommend older readers is that the story won’t make much sense without context and life experience.

I rate Good Omens 5/5 for its excellent characters, delightful unlikely situations, and the most unusual of friendships.

Thank you for joining me as I reviewed Good Omens today on the blog. If you enjoyed reading this review and would like to see more, please consider connecting with me by either following the blog here on WordPress, liking my  Facebook page , or  subscribing to my newsletter.  As an added bonus, newsletter subscribers receive free books, stories, and special offers every week.

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Book Review: Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are two of the most notable fantasy and sci-fi authors from our times. They both had different styles but they share the uncommonly dark and hilarious sense of humor to criticize our society and its rules. They both also share the ownership of one of the most hilarious stories that tell us about how our world could end.

According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter — the world’s only totally reliable guide to the future — the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just after tea… (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

This book is one of my most beloved ones, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett created a story that would make you question a lot the comings and goings of our society, our religions, our beliefs, our own story and how we do have the power to stop it all or making it worse.

In this book, both authors tell the story of our Earth, the adventures of an angel (Aziraphale) and a demon (Crowley) that are the designated ones from both their species to help to unleash the Apocalypse in the world. While the angel has the mission to stop the Antichrist to born in this world, the demon has to protect him to become the destructor of all. The missions are clear, the path is set, but even the most powerful and seemingly uncomplicated plans could go awry. With the help of a very confused satanic nurse and the distraction of two human and normal birthings, the plan is messed and the Antichrist is not sent to live with the politician family. Instead Adam —this is how he is named— lives in the english suburbs. He has grown not knowing his true nature. Meanwhile Aziraphale and Crowley had made an alliance of sorts as both love to live on Earth and feel quite sad about its possible end. They have become so comfortable living among humans that they want to sabotage the plans of their bosses. That’s how they end trying to teach Damien —the boy they believed to be the Antichrist— all what they think necessary to stop the boy of destroying their beloved Earth.

Also there are two other subplots, one involving the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, each one with different personalities, they also have been living on Earth awaiting the End; and the other involves the descendant of Agnes Nutter, the Witch, Anathema Device and two members of the Witchfinder Army, Newton Pulsifer and Sergeant Shadwell, they will try to follow Agnes writes in order to stop the Apocalypse.

It is a really fun and fantastical book, it criticizes with humor the strong inaccuracies of our Systems. It paints both God and Satan as two forces that could be equally wrong —this is perhaps one of the things that the Catholic Church hates from the book, obviously resulting in it trying to ban it. And it shows us that when we love something, we should fight with all that we have to make it better, relying on our friends, relying on our family and loved ones.

One of the quotes that I love the most is:

«’You’re just saying the child isn’t evil of itself?’ he said slowly. ‘Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality, waiting to be shaped,’ said Crowley. He shrugged. ‘Anyway, why’re we’re talking about this good and evil? They’re just names for sides. We know that.’»

A couple of months ago Amazon Prime launched the adaptation of this book as a series of 6 episodes, being Neil Gaiman himself the screenwriter, the fans had loved it so much that they have petitioned its producers to make a sequel. Will they be heard?

Meanwhile I truly insist you to not only read this book, but enjoy the acting of Michael Sheen and David Tennant in its epic adaptation.

Without further ado… Mischief Managed!

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Review: In ‘Good Omens,’ Angel and Demon Try to Save the World

Based on Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s comic fantasy novel, the story finally makes it to the screen.

By Mike Hale

It’s taken a long time for “Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch,” Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s 1990 end-of-days fantasy novel, to reach the screen. Long enough for Gaiman, then a promising comics writer and Duran Duran biographer, to become an industry: The Amazon Prime Video mini-series “Good Omens,” which debuted Friday, is the third current television show based on his work, with Netflix’s “Lucifer” and Starz’s “American Gods.”

And there have been other auspicious changes. When Gaiman and Pratchett made a Queen greatest-hits CD a leitmotif in their book — it’s the preferred driving music of one of the heroes, a demon named Crowley — it was a joke about the bombastic songs’ late-1980s inescapability. Now it gives the mini-series a soundtrack of pop classics.

But what makes the diverting and mostly pleasurable “Good Omens” especially timely is something that hasn’t much changed: Armageddon seems as real a possibility now as it did three decades ago. The story’s hopeful universalism and ecological consciousness, which played well against the backdrop of the late Cold War and the ozone hole, feel just as necessary. A line like “your polar ice caps are below regulation size for a planet of this category” can go right from book to screenplay, and it has.

Gaiman wrote the series’s six episodes himself (Pratchett died in 2015), and in streamlining the book — which was a digressive, more-is-more exercise in the tradition of “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” — he’s made the wisest possible choice. The story is now focused even more closely on the central relationship between Crowley, the high-living devil who kicks the plot into gear by misplacing the baby Antichrist, and the prudish angel Aziraphale, who works with Crowley in a desperate, covert, comical campaign to keep the world from ending.

It’s a good move because the book’s sharpest and funniest writing was mostly in the Crowley-Aziraphale scenes, and for the series Gaiman has reduced the time given to some of the duller material, like the appearances of the horsemen of the Apocalypse (here motorcycle riders) and the group of friends who beneficially influence the unsuspecting 11-year-old Antichrist, Adam Young. (There’s a visual shout-out to Richmal Crompton’s echt-English “William” children’s-book series, a primary inspiration for “Good Omens.”)

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Book Review – Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch is a 1990 comic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, working together early in their careers, long before they became as celebrated as they are now. The apocalypse is upon the world, and according to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (recorded in 1655), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday. This doesn’t sit well with Aziraphale and Crowley, an angel and demon respectively, who have lived among humanity for millennia and have really come to enjoy the lifestyle. So, they’ve decided to cancel Armageddon by killing the Antichrist. Problem is, they’ve somehow misplaced him. As they scramble to locate him, armies amass, the four Bikers of the Apocalypse are riding out together, and a rather nice young lad is learning he has the power to remake the entire world as he sees fit.

A hitch I ran into when starting this novel was the fact that I’d watched the miniseries adaptation back in 2019, which it turns out is phenomenally faithful to the source material. It expanded upon the book by adding more scenes, but changed very little of the plot, as far as I can recall. This means that the novel felt a lot more like a reread than I was expecting it to, and I’m not sure how to feel about that. It was well-written and entertaining, but offered few surprises. If you yourself are split between which you want to experience first, I’d say start with the book. Let your imagination run wild with the text first, then see how Gaiman, as showrunner, adapted it to the screen.

Having read a great many books by each author already, I was surprised to find that the text read a lot more like a Pratchett novel than it did one of Gaiman’s. While the influence of both can be felt throughout the book, its sense of humour is very Pratchettian, with ideas meticulously well thought out, yet utterly hysterical. An example that sticks out most to me are Agnes’s predictions, which are so accurate and cryptic (because she couldn’t quite understand the future) that they’re only seen to be correct after the event has already happened. The comedic tone never faltered, a credit to both authors. I was more or less continuously amused during each reading session, even laughing out loud more than a few times. Though I feel some markedly English cultural references probably went over my head, these were in passing and did not disrupt the experience.

The plot itself is multi-faceted, following a number of different characters who all converge at the end. Some of these subplots I found more compelling than others, as some characters I simply liked more. With some hitches, however, each contributed well to the story overall. The linchpin of the whole plot, the story of Adam Young (the Antichrist) and his friends was an enjoyable, character-driven affair that captured the voices of children really well, especially their daft curiosity and sense of wonder. They had a childlike wisdom to them, but they never felt like they had too firm a grasp on more advanced ideas, or even common sense at times. It struck a really great balance, pitting them against forces greater than any mortal, yet preserving the sense that these are still just kids.

The story of Anathema Device and Witchfinder Private Pulsifer, however, who are trying to uncover the source of the apocalypse, I found a little underwhelming for how much focus they’re given. Though well-defined and not without their charms, contributing to exposition and worldbuilding, at the end of it all they didn’t feel as crucial as I think they ought to have. Anathema ensures Pulsifer is at a certain place and time to help avert catastrophe, but I keep having a nagging feeling that he didn’t really need to be there. The story wouldn’t quite work without them, but they also felt a bit redundant, which vexes me.

The four horsemen, or bikers, of the apocalypse were given a lot more attention than I recall from the miniseries, which added a nice villainous flair to the story. With the end of the world on the horizon, the four of them gather together and prepare to wreak havoc, whether Adam is willing to lead them or not. The way each of them had been inhabiting the world, occupying time and fulfilling their respective niches could be especially disturbing, establishing the stakes through a portents of things to come.

Aziraphale and Crowley were, unsurprisingly, a favourite among the cast of characters. I love how the two most powerful characters in the story find themselves suffering through a comedy of errors, beyond their initial losing track of the Antichrist. A web of farcical circumstances keeps them from interfering competently, which was surprisingly intricate in retrospect. There’s just something so wholesome at the heart of the pair too, each betraying their own nature because they feel the world is worth more than a war between Heaven and Hell, no matter what scripture says. There’s a selfish angle to it, sure, but this brought out their humanity all the more.

The theme that good or evil is never fully set in stone, that lines drawn in the sand can always be moved or brushed away, is woven between nearly all of the characters, whether angels and demons, Witchfinders and Witches, or fussy neighbors and harmless delinquents. While at times the world is presented very cynically, especially from Crowley’s perspective, his job being to bring out the worst in humanity, there’s an underpinning of hope too. The backdrop of a Christian apocalypse was perfect for this, as much of the dogma as we understand it deals so strongly in absolutes (Heaven good, Hell bad). It doesn’t try to refute or rebel against the Creator itself, however, but challenges those who would deign to insist that they know what is, ultimately, unknowable. Maybe those who side with the angels don’t always have your best interest at heart, and maybe what’s meant to be the greatest incarnation of evil the world has ever seen just needs to see good in the world and get the chance to choose.

Final Thoughts

Good Omens is a fantastic book from two fantastic authors, no question. I only wish I had read the book first, as it felt too much like I was retreading a story I already knew. The subplots around some of the characters felt a little superfluous to me, making me wish focus had been redirected elsewhere, but that’s ultimately a personal nitpick. If you only read one book in your life by these authors, you wouldn’t be wrong picking this one. It has great characters, a devilish sense of humour, and a lot of heart.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5

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5 thoughts on “ Book Review – Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman ”

So pleased you enjoyed this, even if it felt like a re-read. I read quite a few years ago now, but I remember loving the combination of Pratchett’s humour and Gaiman’s edginess. I still have the series to watch and you are making me think I should go for a re-read before staring to watch it. 😃

That would certainly be a great way to see how the series expanded upon the text. I hope you enjoy it, however you view it 🙂

I had the same feeling reading this fantastic book since I watched the series first. I was thrilled at all the subtle differences and, of course, the witty back and forth was just as good. I cannot wait for the next series to be available – love these characters!

I’m looking forward to checking it out too, though I’m a little cautiously optimistic because I thought it wrapped things up so nicely that a sequel wouldn’t be necessary. Apparently Gaiman and Pratchett had been in talks about such a thing at some point, though, so hopefully it turns out well. I’d certainly like to see more of Aziraphale and Crowley.

I am so sad and hurt ,I watched the series first and the ending of season 2 has left me heartbroken. But I will try and wait patiently for season 3 .

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Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch is a contemporary and comedic fantasy written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett in 1990. The collaboration between two of the finest fantasy authors of our generation is nothing short of brilliant, and while they both shared everything equally and did it for fun, Pratchett has said they wouldn't do it again for a big clock.

The antichrist has been born, the four bikers of apocalypse have gathered, its the end of the world as we know it and its all happening in the small english suburb of Lower Tadfield. This is not the news the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley had been hoping for as they have become quite accustomed to their lives on earth and are starting to have second thoughts about the whole Armageddon thing. Despite being mortal enemies they decide to work together to help raise the antichrist in the hope that when it comes time for the apocalypse, the antichrist might just decide not to carry through with it. If only those meddling satanic nuns hadn't got to him first...

Good Omens is by far one of the funniest works of fiction I have ever read. Pratchett and Gaiman have managed to create a story that weaves together large doses of satire, cynicism, slapstick and wacky unconventional humour into a cohesive yet suprisingly accurate observation of human life all over the world. The characters, one of the biggest strengths in this book, bring a lot charm and humour to the book by managing to be both unique yet stereotypically British at the same time.

The side plots are are another strength of this story that despite being seemingly random and independent stories are actually laying a solid foundation for the main plot by providing lot of relevant background information and support. This is a fun story that uses these side plots to make light of what can be some very serious and topical themes. While the side plots themselves are a strength, the haphazard way in which they are a told is a slight weakness as they can sometimes be confusing and hard to follow, especially if you haven't picked up the book for a few days. Also there are a few side plots and characters in there that do not really add a great deal to the story and feel like they are just there to grab a few cheap laughs. In the bigger scheme of things these are very minor gripes and do little to detract from what is well thought out, well paced and enjoyable story.

The description above barely scratches the surface of what is a very broad yet complex array of characters and plots because I needed a limit to prevent my nice and accurate review from becoming an overwhelming and unwieldly beast. There is so much going on, so many little details to keep track of, and yet it still manages to come together quite nicely to form a great story about what it means to be human.

• Buy on Amazon

Review by Ryan Lawler

6 positive reader review(s) for Good Omens

Terry Pratchett biography

Horst from South Africa

"I laughed. I cried. One day I'll even read it." – Groucho Marx Here's the thing: if you are lucky enough to have read this book, a book with Dukes of Hell and bikers of the Apocalypse and a demon who drives a Bentley through the English countryside all the while not giving a damn about the stiff British upper lip plus a seriously hilarious cast (some that are experts at lurking and some that are totally confused on whose side they're on) where you even gotta love the baddies – well then, you are one of the lucky ones to have read Good Omens. Truth: my girlfriend has forbidden me to read this in bed because I break out into hysterical giggles so often she can't sleep. So she can't function the next day. We are suing Messrs Pratchett and Gaiman for writing the funniest book ever!

Ryan from USA

Hands down one of the best books I have ever read, and re-read, and re-read.

Makkarii from U.S.

One of my favorite books of all time, I've read it countless times. Read my entire review here: http://wordymadness.blogspot.com/2014/01/good-omens.html

Karen from England

Can't remember how long ago I first read this but it still has the ability to make me laugh out loud just thinking about some passages... read it, if only for the bit about Death, the four bikers, the motorway cafe, the quiz machine, the other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the joke about Elvis (no, really.)

Katerina from Germany

Concerning the 'extra characters who do not add much to the book' - I disagree. On the first read-through, it's true that one find oneself craving more of the stage-stealing Azi and Crowley, but the presence of all the human characters in particular is essential in a book that is *about* humanity and how important it is. Those scenes are needed to give context to the main characters' decision to side with them at the end. Excellent review, however. :)

Dave from NYC

READ THIS BOOK! Even if you are not a fantasy fan you will enjoy this book. This book is a combination of the best these two great authors have to offer. Gaiman is an incredible plot weaver who is able to temper some of the obviousness of Pratchet's puns. The main characters are hilarious and you can't help but love this quirky cast.

9.9 /10 from 7 reviews

All Terry Pratchett Reviews

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Thoughts on Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

I have a New Year's resolution to read more and visit the library more often. Every year, I start a resolution early to see if it will stick and make it a habit before the new year rolls around. I started out by reading Good Omens, a book that's been suggested to me by a few friends and I finally got around to reading and finishing it.

Overall impression is positive! It was a page turner for sure and I liked most of the characters, Crowley and Aziraphale chiefly. Before this, about a year ago, I read American Gods by the same author and I can see many similarities which was a lot of fun. There are some things I'd like to nitpick with you all if you would humor me...

The multiple viewpoints, especially in the last third of the book or so, were giving me whiplash. Crowley, Aziraphale/Mr. Shadwell/Madame Tracy, The Four Horsemen, Adam Young/the Them, and Newt/Anathema each had their own separate stories that intertwined with each other and that was great but sometimes each viewpoint only had a paragraph before bouncing to the next character's story. I don't mind this but it happened so much towards the end that it began to take the wind out of the climax's sails (for me. Keep in mind this post is just opinion).

The notes at the bottom of the pages were often hilarious but sometimes were a bit distracting. The writing was genius and there were times I looked forward to the little asterisks but towards the end there they sometimes felt like too much author interruption. Sometimes those little notes broke up the flow of the story a bit too much for my liking.

The concept of modern-day Four Horsemen of the apocalypse was awesome and I loved each one

Reading about the Them (i.e the son of Satan and his friends) felt very slow. I feel like I should be lenient here because, after all, the kid's 11 years old and the authors pretty much perfectly summed up 11 year old life and activities. But yeah, the 11 year old children's dialogue was so accurate that it was slightly painful sometimes.

Absolutely loved how similar Crowley and Aziraphale were. Just two agents that were sent to do a job and though on surface level were opposites, both were just two sides of the same coin. I liked seeing how Crowley could be selfless and the moment Aziraphale cursed for the first time in 6,000 years.

Mr. Shadwell was a dick to Madame Tracey and didn't contribute all that much besides sending Newt on his mission to Lower Tadfield. I may be way off base here and if I'm missing something crucial then I'm terribly sorry.

So yes, all in all the above are fairly small things that I didn't love but overall the book was great. Really fun concept, witty writing and definitely entertaining. Let me know what you think!

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Pop Culture Happy Hour

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• Pop Culture

'Good Omens' Serves Up A Cozy, Strangely Heartwarming Apocalypse

Glen Weldon

Dancing on the Escalator of Life (on the head of pin): The demon Crowley (David Tennant) and the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) conspire to stave off the end of the world in Good Omens . Amazon Prime hide caption

Dancing on the Escalator of Life (on the head of pin): The demon Crowley (David Tennant) and the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) conspire to stave off the end of the world in Good Omens .

Most of the cleverest, funniest bits in Amazon's six-episode series Good Omens , which debuts on May 31, come straight from the 1990 novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, as you might expect.

Most — but, happily, not all.

The plot, about a demon named Crowley (David Tennant), who originally tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, and an angel named Aziraphale (Michael Sheen), whose original gig was guarding the Garden's East Gate with a flaming sword, is wholly intact: The two eternal beings' extended tenure on Earth has engendered in them a fondness for the place and its people, so when they are instructed that the apocalypse has arrived, they conspire to stop it.

The elaborate mix-up involving an order of satanic nuns that results in the baby Antichrist getting mislaid — that's also straight from the book.

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Ditto the notion that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been biding their time on Earth until they get their marching orders — er, riding orders. The detail that in the meantime one of the four — Pestilence — retired once penicillin was discovered, only to be replaced in the lineup by Pollution (Lourdes Faberes) seems to be one of the book's, and the show's, particularly Gaiman-esque touches.

In a more fundamental sense, however, the thing that sets Good Omens — book and show — apart from the fire hose of grim apocalyptic fare we're getting doused with on a daily basis is its thorough, inveterate, consummate Britishness.

(I was going to add "unapologetic," there, but "unapologetically British" feels like a contradiction in terms, surely.)

You're unlikely to find an Armageddon as warm and cozy as the one outlined in the novel; think Mad Max: Fury Road , if the Charlize Theron role had instead gone to Miss Marple — that's the all-important vibe the show has to nail, and it does.

I mentioned above that most of the cleverest bits in the Amazon series come straight from the book, but the series does stake out its own patches of humorous real estate. The angel Gabriel rates only a mention or two in the novel; here, as played with a kind of tetchily impatient smarm by Jon Hamm, he's the ultimate slick, condescending corporate boss — which is to say: As seen through the eyes of a Brit, he's everything that is quintessentially American.

Largely though, the series makes the novel come alive through its (mostly) unerring casting choices, which double down on that crucial Britishness. Brief cameos by Derek Jacobi (as the Metatron), Josie Lawrence (as a witch whose prophecies figure largely in the plot), Miranda Richardson (as a psychic who doesn't get much to do until the final episode), Brian Cox (as the voice of Death) and Benedict Freaking Cumberbatch (as never mind who, it's a surprise) make the whole thing go down like a fresh cup of inordinately milky tea.

But it's Tennant and Sheen in the two lead roles who really dig in and unearth the foundational Britishness the story requires, by planting their feet at either end of the spectrum of national identities popularly associated with the United Kingdom.

Tennant's Crowley is Bill Nighy by way of Keith Richards — a louche, lanky figure who never walks when he could drunkenly saunter. Tennant is having a ball, here, and manages to make Crowley a hugely expressive presence despite having to emote from behind pitch-black sunglasses and (sometimes) a wig of flowing, devil-red locks. Sheen, on the other hand, is serving you fusty, fussy and flustered in a classic morning coat, waistcoat and pocket watch ensemble — E.M. Forster meets Wind in the Willows ' Badger. The friendship that develops between the two beings is, of course, Good Omens ' true subject, and both actors chart its progress in different ways. Tennant is all bluff insouciance that slowly erodes to reveal the affection beneath it; Sheen's nervous, feckless worrying eventually abrades into defiant resolve. A cursory overview of the plot would suggest that the two decide to work together to defend humanity from divine caprice — but the performances make it clear that what each entity is truly fighting for is one another and for the bond they've forged.

Not that they would come out and say so, of course, because: British.

One last bit of genius casting: Frances McDormand plays the Voice of God, which, in terms of this critic's ability to cultivate and maintain a dispassionate critical distance in the evaluation of the work at hand, just seems like cheating, frankly.

Quibbles? Sure — the subplot involving young Antichrist Adam (Sam Taylor Buck) and his pals never quite comes together as deftly as the Tennant-Sheen business does. The kids are perfectly fine, but the script demands a bit more from them than they manage to deliver. Similarly, the jokes in a story thread involving witches and witchfinders never land as hard or as cleanly as they could — perhaps it's just that their comparatively slower comic timing suffers in comparison with that of Tennant and Sheen, which is understandable.

In closing, I'll note that series involves a substantial amount of special effects, on which all that Amazon money gets put to solid use. This is a particularly gratifying turn of events to those of us who spent years watching David Tennant anchor another high-concept British television series Whose cosmic narrative reach consistently exceeded its digital-effects budget's grasp.

• Entertainment

Good Omens review: Devilish David Tennant a hell of a lot of fun

Amazon unites Tennant and Michael Sheen as it adapts Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's book.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel Prime. In Amazon Prime Video's apocalyptic new miniseries Good Omens , it may be the end of days, but  David Tennant  and  Michael Sheen  vamp it up like there's no tomorrow. 

Good Omens' release date is May 31 on Amazon Prime Video.

Good Omens is streaming on Amazon now. The six-episode miniseries, based on a 1990 comic fantasy novel by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett , is adapted by Gaiman in accordance with Pratchett's final wishes .

An irreverent tale of angelic intrigue in which Sheen and Tennant are servants of heaven and hell minding their own business on Earth during a celestial cold war. Devilishly funny in places while cozily meandering in others, the series earns its wings thanks to their heavenly double act.

Sheen's prim seraphim and Tennant's debauched devil are mobilized to bring about the apocalypse when the Antichrist is born in contemporary England -- except an admin error by satanic nuns delivers the bringer of darkness to the wrong family. Now who knows if the world will end on time?

Angel and demon join forces as a motley collection of angels, devils and witches seek out the erstwhile Antichrist. Highlights of the freewheeling comedy that follows include surreal animated asides about angels dancing on the head of a pin, a witch hurrying along her own burning and the sight of Tennant just generally striding about like he owns the place.

As the show romps through human history from the Garden of Eden to the swinging '60s, the former Doctor Who steals the show as slinky demon Crowley. A snake-hipped combination of Bill Nighy and Keith Richards, Tennant offers serpentine oomph whether he's sinking into the depths of demonic despair, engulfed by flame or dressing up as a Mary Poppins-style nanny -- practically perfidious in every way.

This louche Lucifer has adapted well to the modern world, crashing mobile networks and diverting motorways into the shape of demonic sigils, and he begins to think armageddon might not be such a great idea after all. Sheen's nervy angel Aziraphale shares Crowley's concerns: He loves sushi and rare books and can't understand why heaven is so keen to go to war. Sheen's Aziraphale is a less showy part than Tennant's Crowley, but the unfailingly decent angel is the gentle heart of the story. 

Sheen and Tennant have fun in a succession of divine period costumes.

Pratchett and Gaiman's 1990 novel mirrored the images of its much-loved authors in the lead characters of gentle Aziraphale and black-clad Crowley and in its cheery turn of phrase underpinned with a streak of jet-black humor. With the average goth's favorite scribe Gaiman writing the TV adaptation, you expect it to lean toward a darker tone. But if anything, it could be darker. While blackly comic in places, Amazon's Good Omens feels downright cuddly compared with, say, the outrageous treatment of similar metaphysical subjects in Preacher . 

A love of language shines through the masterful writing of both Gaiman and Pratchett. Unfortunately, the TV adaptation clings to the book's text, translating it into a clunky and intrusive voiceover. Look, I've loved the novel and its delightful wordplay from the moment I first read it as a teenager. But television is a visual medium, and the wordplay-based jokes that can only be done in a voiceover, as amusing as they are, don't make up for the constant interruption by momentum-killing explanation.

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The voiceover is just one of the things that makes the show feel kind of slow. The music and editing and a few narrative choices contribute to a general lack of urgency: Considering the show is literally counting down to the end of the world, it's bizarre there's so little sense of impending doom.

The main problem is that we're way ahead of the characters in their quest. We know where the Antichrist is, which makes the other characters' investigations and revelations feel a bit circuitious. And when we do reach the end of the countdown, it's a bit of an Antichrist anticlimax.

It doesn't help that a limp Jack Whitehall and blank Adria Arjona have zero chemistry in what should be a sizzling pairing of witchfinder and witch.

Apart from that, though, the cast is rounded out by familiar faces injecting energy into even the smallest parts. Michael McKean manages to find pathos under a wildly veering Scottish accent, Jon Hamm brings glossy-eyed cynicism to the blandly self-righteous angel Gabriel and Mireille Enos gleefully vamps it up as one of the four motorcyclists of the apocalypse. But most of all there are Sheen and Tennant, bouncing Pratchett and Gaiman's words off each other beautifully.

Irreverent and cheekily amoral, Good Omens can be slow in places, but two divine central performances make it a heavenly good time.

Originally published May 20.

The Literature Empire

Book review: good omens.

Hi everyone! Will I ever come up with some really good opening of my articles without making reading of it feeling awkward? Maybe. I think I’ve said this many times before, but this time I’m really trying to put articles here a bit more regularly. At least once a week, to begin with. What do you think? (Yes, I know, I failed miserably again..) Anyway, I should introduce what today’s article will be about. I bet that all of you remember when Good Omens on Amazon Prime took over everyone’s hearts. Or at least, it definitely took won my heart over. Then I decided to read the book as well. What was the book like? Did I like it more than the TV show?

Good Omens , written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, is a story of an angel Aziraphale and a demon Crowley, who want to stop Armageddon. Since it’s a moment that’s supposed to begin a war between heaven and hell, it’s pretty ironic, isn’t it? Aziraphale and Crowley quickly found their place on the list of my favourite book characters. They are just perfect, quirky, funny, and they are the main element of the story that makes it amusing. The story is going in a fast pace so you don’t get bored by long descriptions and you don’t get lost in the plot. I also love the whole theme of the book. There is animosity between heaven and hell, but on one hand, there are Aziraphale and Crowley trying to stop Armageddon, and on the other hand, there is heaven and hell doing everything they can to make it happen so they can begin a war with each other. It just shows that if people have the same interest, they can work with each other to achieve it. The downside is, that the motive of those actions doesn’t always have to be good. But it also shows, that if you care enough, you can always try to come up with an alternative to ‘what is right’.

I have to admit that I didn’t really enjoy reading about the children in the book. I can’t really explain why Adam Young and his friends were so hard for me to read, but the way their characters were written, wasn’t gripping enough for me. However, I really enjoyed the storyline of the witch Anathema. She brought more magic to the story and for me she was the wise character of the book. Even though Aziraphale and Crowley are charming, Anathema acts more as an adult.

And can we just talk about the end of Armageddon? I have to say that I was quite disappointed because it all ended up so quickly and I think that Gaiman and Pratchett could make it a bit more complicated for Adam Young and his friends to make riders of the Apocalypse go away. It all seemed too easy, which kind of makes sense as Adam and his friends are still children. It just keeps bugging me how easy and quick it was.

I also have to mention the Good Omens show on Amazon Prime. Did I like it more than a book? I would say yes. But I have only one reason that isn’t related to how the book was written at all. I have a soft spot for David Tennant and Michael Sheen. I loved the chemistry they had on the screen and for me, their approach to these characters moved the show to another level. At the same time, I must say that there really isn’t anything wrong about the book. For me, it’s the first book I’ve read by Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett, so I don’t really have anything to compare this story to. But I can say that it definitely made me curious about other books written by these brilliant writers.

I began to write this review some time ago, way before all this pandemic and lockdown happened, and finished it only recently. I wasn’t really sure if I should publish it, because to me, it almost seems like the Armageddon is happening right now. War, famine, pollution, death. It’s just tragic what is happening in the world right now. I’m in the different country than my family and I don’t know when I’ll see them again. And staying in home most of the time on my own makes me sad. But if all of us do our bit, it will be soon okay, right? Anyway, I went ahead and published this review because it really is a lovely story that shows, that every cloud has its silver lining. And I believe that it will all get better soon.

If you like the review or know someone who might enjoy it, share it if you can, please. And in few days, I’ll be back with few tips on what to do so you don’t go crazy in quarantine.

Thank you and stay safe and healthy. (Another part of my writing I need to work on, right?)

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The Untold Truth Of Good Omens

It was inevitable that a collaboration between authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett would become a cult classic, and that's exactly what happened with their 1990 comedic apocalypse novel "Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch." This wacky religious satire centers around the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, who've formed a close relationship watching over humanity for millennia, working together to track down the Antichrist — an obliviously powerful boy named Adam — and prevent the end of the world.

In 2019, four years after Pratchett's death from Alzheimer's-related complications, Gaiman served as the writer and showrunner of a six-episode miniseries adaptation made as a co-production between Amazon Studios and the BBC. Starring Michael Sheen as Aziraphale and David Tennant as Crowley, the TV series was an instant fan favorite, retaining the book's sense of humor while expanding upon the world and character relationships in interesting ways. In 2023, the show's Season 2 , co-written by Gaiman and John Finnemore, serves as an original sequel, and Gaiman has talked about making a third season if given the opportunity.

Whether you are familiar with "Good Omens" through the book, the series, or both, there is much more to learn about Gaiman and Pratchett's creation that you might not be aware of. Here are some of the most interesting behind-the-scenes stories and hidden details that shine a new light on this most ineffable story.

Good Omens originated as a parody of the Just William series

According to the afterword of the Harper paperback edition of "Good Omens," Gaiman and Pratchett's novel was initially conceived as "William the Antichrist," a parody of the "Just William" books by Richmal Crompton. Though it's relatively obscure stateside, the "Just William" series was incredibly successful in the world of British children's literature for nearly half a century, with the troublemaking but well-meaning 11-year-old boy William Brown and his friends appearing in 38 volumes between 1922 and 1970.

Gaiman and Pratchett originally were going to have William himself raised to become the Antichrist but ended up changing the character's name to Adam so they could control the copyright. Though the general concept behind the book moved beyond a direct parody, the influence of Crompton's writing is still there in the characterization of Adam and his gang, "the Them." The "Good Omens" TV series makes a direct callout to this important influence in the first season finale, with the "Just William" books being added to Aziraphale's bookshop after Adam restores the world.

Terry Pratchett wrote more than Neil Gaiman

When two authors are co-writing a book, how much work does each individual put into the process and who gets credit for what? Gaiman's and Pratchett's accounts of the "Good Omens" writing process are in alignment with each other, so we can get a general idea of who did what for the book. Gaiman estimated, "Terry probably wrote around 60,000 'raw' and I wrote 45,000 'raw' words," but they also said they'd regularly rewrite each other's work enough that it's hard to assign specific credit to different sections.

Pratchett seconded the claim that he did most of the physical writing because of three factors: Gaiman had deadlines for "Sandman," they'd agreed that Pratchett would serve as the book's editor, and, he said, "I'm a selfish bastard and tried to write ahead to get to the good bits before Neil." The two agreed that Pratchett wrote most of the Adam/Them material and created the character of Agnes Nutter, while Gaiman focused on the Four Horsemen and many of the tangential asides. Ultimately, their collaboration was so strong that Pratchett credited much of the book to "a composite creature called Terryandneil."

A bad review became great marketing

Upon publication in the United Kingdom in 1990, "Good Omens" was an instant hit, earning strong sales and positive reviews. In the United States, it took a bit more time to find an audience and struggled due to an extremely negative review in The New York Times . Workman, the first American publisher, dropped the book in response to the pan, not giving it promotion and heavily discounting the remaining copies.

In retrospect, this review was dreadfully wrong — and not just about "Good Omens." In it, critic Joe Queenan also dismissively described the band Queen as "a vaudevillian rock group whose hits are buried far in the past and should have been buried sooner" and said Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is "a vastly overpraised book or radio program or industry or something that became quite popular in Britain a decade ago when it became apparent that Margaret Thatcher would be in office for some time and that laughs were going to be hard to come by."

Of course, outside the context of a critic disliking both, comparing "Good Omens" to a beloved classic of sci-fi comedy like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" would sound flattering. Reissues of "Good Omens" have turned a review that initially hurt the book into a means of promoting it; the covers now quote The New York Times in calling it "a direct descendant of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.'"

One interviewer thought it was real prophecy

Here's a request for any lost media hunters who might be reading this piece: Please try to find a recording of Gaiman and Pratchett's most ridiculous press interview from the 1990 "Good Omens" book tour. Based on Gaiman and Pratchett's many recollections of this interview with a New York ABC radio affiliate, it's almost certain to be as hilarious as any of the funniest bits in "Good Omens" itself.

The thing that made this interview so memorable — so much so that Pratchett could perfectly recall the details even when he was losing his memory from Alzheimer's — is that the interviewer had not actually read the book and did not realize it was a work of fiction. "He thought he'd been given two kooks who'd come across these old prophecies and were predicting that the world was going to be ending," Gaiman told the science fiction magazine Locus , to which Pratchett added, "Once we realized, it was great fun. We could take over the interview, since we knew he didn't know enough to stop us." The engineers, visible to the subjects but not the interviewer, were apparently falling over with laughter in the control room.

Two different movie versions failed to come about

Long before the Amazon Prime streaming series became a reality, Hollywood had its eyes on "Good Omens." Two different movie adaptations are known to have been in development but never came to be. The first, from 1992, had a script that was written by Gaiman but involved significant changes from the book at the behest of the studio, Sovereign Pictures. The worst of these changes, according to those who've read it, was that Crowley was much meaner to Aziraphale. When asked about this on Tumblr , Gaiman answered, "He was the Crowley that the studio wanted, in the story they wanted." Sovereign Pictures ultimately went bankrupt, putting the script in legal limbo.

The second Hollywood go-round in the early 2000s seemed more promising. Terry Gilliam, whose "Monty Python" humor and dark fantasy films were clear influences on Gaiman and Pratchett's sensibilities, was going to direct it. Robin Williams was rumored to be the top choice to play Aziraphale, with Johnny Depp talked about as a potential Crowley. Gilliam had big ideas for how to adapt the book that earned the authors' approval. Alas, the combination of budget and runtime restraints, discomfort with apocalyptic stories in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and Gilliam's generally busy schedule kept this adaptation from coming to fruition.

How Gaiman's Judaism influenced Crowley

As a Jewish person who went to a Christian school and has family in Scientology, Gaiman has a unique perspective on religion, to say the least. "Good Omens" is a story set firmly within a Christian mythos, but Gaiman's Jewishness still heavily influenced it. This is most notable in regard to the character of Crowley, whom he's called on Tumblr "the most Jewish character I've ever written."

Why is Crowley so widely interpreted through a Jewish lens? On the most basic level, it's because he's always questioning the operations of Heaven and Hell, and Judaism is a religion based on questioning (the Hebrew word "Israel" translates to "wrestles with God"). His perspective on his demonic duties is closer to the Jewish conception of Satan as testing humanity than the Christian conception of Satan as evil. "Good Omens" as a whole draws influence from the Jewish tradition of midrash — stories that elaborate upon the Bible in sometimes wild and conflicting directions. Gaiman wrote on Tumblr , "You can't be familiar with the midrash and also assume that anyone in the Bible has any idea what's actually going on."

The show had to change Crowley's car

In the book, Crowley drives a 1926 Bentley — a model neither Gaiman or Pratchett had ever actually seen. "It was in the days before Google," Gaiman explained to  Business Insider . "[A] '26 Bentley, that sounds right." When it came time to visualize the car, however, the real 1926 model didn't actually fit with the image in Gaiman's head, so a 1933 Bentley ended up being used for the TV series instead.

Cars of this era had their limitations, so the stunt sequences where Crowley drives at 90 miles per hour couldn't be done with the real Bentley. As such, many scenes used CGI, constructed models, or rear projection effects instead of real driving. The scene where the car is set on fire and blows up, however, was done for real with practical effects. "Yeah, so, there were many Bentleys," director Douglas Mackinnon said of the scene.

Brian May took convincing to license the music

In the novel, Crowley's introduction in the present day reads as such: "Nothing about him looked particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns, no wings. Admittedly he was listening to a 'Best of Queen' tape, but no conclusions should be drawn from this because all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into 'Best of Queen' albums." The series doesn't extend this hypothesis quite so wide, but all music played in Crowley's Bentley at least does become "Best of Queen."

Queen's lead guitarist, Brian May, was initially skeptical about whether this joke was loving or mocking, and as such he refused to license the band's music for the BBC radio adaptation of "Good Omens." When it came time for the TV adaptation, however, this music had to be included, so Gaiman wrote May a letter, Gaiman said on Tumblr , explaining the origins of the book's cassette tape joke and how much he and everyone involved with the series loved Queen's music. May apologized for his initial reluctance and licensed the band's catalog to become the soundtrack to the show, though he took a little extra convincing to let them use "Bohemian Rhapsody" due to the biopic of the same title being made around the same time.

Lots of Pratchett Easter eggs

Though Pratchett sadly didn't live to see the "Good Omens" TV show get made, his presence is felt throughout the series. Not only does it faithfully adapt the spirit of his writing, but the production team included multiple Easter eggs in tribute to the beloved comedic fantasy writer. One notable such Easter egg is that Pratchett's signature fedora and scarf are on display in Aziraphale's bookshop. "We never focus on it," cinematographer Gavin Finney told SyFy Wire . "It's just there, and the camera goes past the hat and scarf. It was cool not to foreground it, but just to have it in the background." Pratchett's books are also included in the shop's extensive not-for-sale collection.

Pratchett himself was originally set to make a cameo, and there's still a voice cameo from someone playing Pratchett ... sort of. In Episode 4, the nuclear power PR person on the radio is voiced by "Game of Thrones" actor Paul Kaye, who played Pratchett in the reenactments for the BBC documentary "Terry Pratchett: Back in Black" and used the same vocal impression for "Good Omens." This is a fitting place to pay homage because before he began writing "Discworld," Pratchett had worked in the press office for the Central Electricity Generating Board in an area with multiple nuclear power plants.

Michael Sheen keeps up with fan art and fanfic

People who make TV shows don't typically pay attention to fan fiction. Some are uncomfortable with it, while others (including Gaiman himself) are supportive of people writing it but avoid reading it themselves for legal reasons. Occasionally, however, you'll find a creative who's a bit more involved with the sphere of fan works, and Aziraphale actor Michael Sheen is one such person.

Sheen has cited fan fiction as part of why he chose to play up Aziraphale's romantic attraction to Crowley. On "The Graham Norton Show" in 2021 (via Tumblr ), Sheen said, "There's a lot of fan fiction going on out there. ... It's kind of amazing. I think it's a fantastic thing — the fact that people sort of were a bit weird about [fan fiction] ... I think it's wrong — [fan fiction is] such a love of the show, and it shows such commitment to it. I think it's wonderful." He's regularly shared and praised "Good Omens" fan art on Twitter, which has significantly endeared him to the fandom.

A petition asked Netflix to cancel the Prime series

Despite its highly irreverent attitude towards Christianity, the book "Good Omens" was met with shockingly little backlash from the religious right and was embraced by many progressive Christians. The TV series, however, had a bigger platform with more publicity, and with that mainstream presence came negative attention from the Catholic conservative group the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property. This organization got over 20,000 signatures on a petition to ban the "blasphemous" series — and addressed this petition to the wrong streaming service entirely.

The petition, which complained about everything from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse being a biker gang to God being voiced by Frances McDormand, was wrongly addressed to Netflix. Netflix had nothing to do with the production or distribution of "Good Omens." Netflix's U.K. Twitter account humorously responded, "Ok we promise not to make any more," while Amazon Prime Video's Twitter joked, "Hey @netflix, we'll cancel 'Stranger Things' if you cancel 'Good Omens.'" The petition corrected its mistake after being widely mocked, but it certainly didn't stop Amazon from ordering a second season.

Season 3 could deliver on Pratchett's sequel plan

As of this writing, a third season of "Good Omens" has yet to be officially greenlit. However, Gaiman said that he's planning a potential Season 3 of the TV series to adapt the story for the book sequel he and Pratchett planned out but never got the chance to write. The book "Good Omens" was written just before Gaiman's "Sandman" and Pratchett's "Discworld" really took off as nerd culture phenomenons. The two had brainstormed ideas for a sequel, titled "668 — The Neighbour of the Beast," shortly after the first book's publication, but after Gaiman moved to the United States and they each became fully occupied with their increasingly popular personal series, finding time together to write "Neighbour of the Beast" became impossible.

Some ideas brainstormed for the book sequel were already present in Season 1 of the show, most notably the expanded roles for Gabriel and the other angels. Season 2, Gaiman explained on his Tumblr , "Exists to get us from the end of the first book to the beginning of the second book that we plotted. If we get to make a Season 3, that is the book that Terry and I plotted in 1989." This potential Season 3, Gaiman said on Tumblr , would be intended as the series' final season.

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Good Omens isn’t perfect, but it’s fun. That’s all it needs to be.

Fans of Good Omens will rejoice at the loving faithfulness of this adaptation. For the rest of you, it may lag a bit.

by Aja Romano

Good Omens is one of those books you either love or haven’t read yet. The union of the late Terry Pratchett at his professional peak and a then-little-known Neil Gaiman, the hilarious fantasy novel became an instant cult favorite after hitting shelves in 1990. Ever since, its fans have clamored for a screen adaptation of the lighthearted, wry story about an angel and a demon trying to avert a haywire apocalypse.

The book has come close several times to being turned into a movie over the three decades since Good Omens ’ publication. In 2002, Terry Gilliam attempted to make one with Johnny Depp and Robin Williams in the lead roles — as the demon, Crowley, and the angel, Aziraphale, respectively — only to be thwarted by post-9/11 cultural anxieties about the end of the world. Gilliam continued to try unsuccessfully to adapt his version, and the book was also made into a BBC radio drama in 2015.

Now, at long last, Amazon has brought us a proper screen adaptation of Good Omens. Amazon’s version is not a film, but a six-hour long miniseries, with a screenplay by Gaiman and starring David Tennant as Crowley and Michael Sheen as Aziraphale. Directed by veteran Doctor Who director Douglas Mackinnon, it’s a funny, warm treat that fans of the book will find familiar and endearing, from the strong ensemble cast — Michael Sheen in particular shines as the fusty, fastidious angel — to the slightly kitschy production design, which flits between a litany of pleasantly clichéd English aesthetics, from P.G. Wodehouse to Harry Potter .

The loving craft and extended runtime aside, though, the miniseries ultimately feels less substantive than I had hoped. But if it also carries a few of the books’ flaws with it, such as a few pancake-flat characters and stagnant bits of pacing here and there — well, like Aziraphale, we’re good at forgiving small sins.

Good Omens is a story of best friends trying to save the world (and each other)

Good Omens features a large ensemble cast of angels, demons, and humans all squabbling over the end of the world. At the center of the hubbub are Crowley and Aziraphale, a demon and an angel who’ve been friends for millennia, and who have resided on earth so long that they’ve both become deeply fond of it. They’ve also become increasingly jaded with their respective sides of the celestial war between heaven and hell; so when they’re both tasked with aiding the coming of the apocalypse, they inevitably decide to work together to stop it instead.

The story begins, more or less, when Crowley — a demon of some importance, despite his ambivalence about the job — delivers the Antichrist to the wrong pair of parents due to a farcical mixup. They wind up raising the boy, who they name Adam (Sam Taylor Buck), in a bucolic English village, while the forces of Satan mistakenly concentrate all their diabolical energy on grooming a powerful politician’s son instead. So instead of the fate of the world resting on the shoulders of a powerful world leader, it resides with the deceptively cherubic Adam, who’s thus far lived a totally normal life, doing nothing more diabolical than stealing apples and playing with an innocent group of neighborhood kids, called “the Them.”

Over the course of the miniseries, Adam reaches his 11th birthday and rapidly becomes aware of his power — as well as the misery of human existence. The question of whether Adam will ultimately succumb to his world-destroying temptations is never truly a matter of suspense; after all, his friends aren’t super into the idea of him wiping out the planet, and he also has a really cute hellhound who helps temper his more genocidal impulses. But whether heaven and hell will allow anyone to interfere with the apocalypse, and whether Crowley and Aziraphale will escape the combat unscathed, is a bit more uncertain.

As the black-clad, snake-eyed, Bentley-driving Crowley, David Tennant should own the show — but his performance is a bit erratic, and the weird litany of bad hairpieces and occasional strange CGI he’s dealt doesn’t help. We’re never quite sure if Crowley is supposed to be legitimately cool or if he simply believes he’s a badass. By contrast, Michael Sheen is near-perfect as the bookish, overeager, and gleefully queer Aziraphale. But if anything, he’s too good, in the holy sense: we never really get a glimpse of the Aziraphale that Crowley fondly describes as being a bit of a bastard.

When they’re together, however, Tennant and Sheen’s chemistry shines, and the series twirls around their transition from an all-too-human complacence to a growing horror over the coming apocalypse — and the possible end of their long, star-crossed relationship.

This production will carry Good Omens fans along. For newcomers, it lags.

Gaiman and Pratchett largely wrote themselves into the characters of Crowley and Aziraphale, respectively, and it’s the duo’s affectionate bickering and unlikely camaraderie that dominate the show as it does the book — so much so that it’s easy to forget what a large cast the story actually contains.

That’s both a blessing and a curse for Amazon’s Good Omens , which is at its best whenever Aziraphale and Crowley share the screen, but which tends to feel aimless whenever the narrative switches to focus on the other cast members: the meddling demons, the officious angel Gabriel (Jon Hamm in purple contacts), a prophetic witch and her descendent, Anathema Device (Adria Arjona). Oh, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

The snooziest of them all is a zealous “witchfinder” named Shadwell (Michael McKean) and his psychic neighbor, Madam Tracy (Miranda Richardson). Even when acted to the hilt, these scenes slow the series to a snail’s crawl, and it’s tempting to drag the streaming slider to the right.

The failure of the show to successfully make these scenes feel buoyant lies in the writing rather than the acting, because for the most part, the show is superbly cast and well-acted. But the adaptation, as faithfully rendered by Gaiman, frequently highlights the novel’s biggest flaw: When it’s not following around its quippy, homoerotic pair of celestial beings, the story fizzles out.

Most of Good Omens’ magic does come from the truly collaborative joy emanating from Pratchett and Gaiman, both authors who like to shift between ebullient whimsy and profound rumination on the cosmos. While other screen adaptations of Gaiman’s works have been hit-or-miss ( Coraline , Stardust ), Good Omens maintains a sunny, Pratchett-like disposition that keeps it from feeling too self-important, which Gaiman’s works unfortunately tend to do when adapted. It helps that Gaiman himself not only writes but is executive producer on the show, keeping the show from falling beneath its own weight.

With Gaiman at the helm, and with an ample amount of time to do the book’s nuances justice, Good Omens succeeds much better than any recent Gaiman (or Pratchett) adaptation in memory. But we’re still ultimately left with a screenplay that faithfully emphasizes Good Omens ’ plot rather than its profundities or literary flourishes. There’s no attempt, for example, to recreate the book’s famous footnotes, though the addition of Frances McDormand as the voice of God is a nice, if largely wasted, touch.

Unfortunately, most of the cast ultimately feels largely wasted, simply because the story doesn’t know what to do with them. The patience we have as readers for the parts of the book where Crowley and Aziraphale aren’t happily bantering away doesn’t yield the same sort of rewards when stripped of their literary pleasures, and the ending may feel abrupt and largely anticlimactic to many newcomers.

For everyone else, however, there’ll be plenty of delight in watching the novel come to life at last. And for viewers who figure out quickly that the fun of Good Omens is in watching the drama around the world ending, rather than fussing too much over the actual end of the world, this is a series that won’t disappoint.

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Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch Kindle Edition

The classic collaboration from the internationally bestselling authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, soon to be an original series starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

?Season 2 of Good Omens coming soon!

“ Good Omens  . . . is something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had collaborated. Lots of literary inventiveness in the plotting and chunks of very good writing and characterization. It’s a wow. It would make one hell of a movie. Or a heavenly one. Take your pick.” — Washington Post

According to  The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter ,  Witch  (the world's only  completely  accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .

• Print length 390 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher William Morrow
• Publication date June 28, 2011
• File size 5655 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com review, from publishers weekly.

“The Apocalypse has never been funnier.” — Clive Barker

“Hilariously naughty.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Wacky and irreverent.” — Booklist

“Reads like the Book of Revelation, rewritten by Monty Python.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“Fiendishly funny.” — New Orleans Times-Picayune

“From beginning to end, GOOD OMENS is side-splittingly funny . . . a ripping good time.” — Rave Reviews

“If you’ve never read [GOOD OMENS], don’t miss it now. Grade: A.” — Rocky Mountain News

“It could be called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Armargeddon.” — Palm Beach Post

“[L]ittle asides, quirky observations, simple puns and parody eventually add up to snorts, chortles and outright laughs.” — San Diego Union-Tribune

“What’s so funny about Armageddon? More than you’d think . . . GOOD OMENS has arrived just in time.” — Detroit Free Press

“Full-bore contemporary lunacy. A steamroller of silliness that made me giggle out loud.” — San Diego Union-Tribune

“A direct descendant of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” — New York Times

“An utter delight—fresh, exciting, uproariously funny.” — Poul Anderson

“Outrageous . . . read it for a riotous good laugh!” — Orlando Sentinel

“I whooped . . . I laughed . . . I was in near hysterics.: — New York Review of Science Fiction

“A slapstick Apocalypse, a grinning grimoire, a comic Necronomicon, a hitchhiker’s guide to the netherworld.” — James Morrow, author of Only Begotten Daughter

“One Hell of a funny book.” — Gene Wolfe

“Hilarious!” — Locus

“Huge fun.” — Sunday Express (London)

“Irreverently funny and unexpectedly wise . . . Highly recommended.” — Library Journal

“Something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had collaborated.” — Washington Post

From the Inside Flap

From the back cover.

According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter , Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

About the Author

Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling and multi-award winning author and creator of many beloved books, graphic novels, short stories, film, television and theatre for all ages. He is the recipient of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and many Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. Neil has adapted many of his works to television series, including Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett) and The Sandman . He is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College. For a lot more about his work, please visit: https://www.neilgaiman.com/

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Harpercollins publishers, inc..

Chapter One

Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it was created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unoffi cially, it came into being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old.

These dates are incorrect.

Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760 B.C. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508 B.C.

These suggestions are also incorrect.

Archbishop James Usher (1580?1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 B.C. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 B.C. , at exactly 9:00 A.M. , because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.

This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour.

The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet.

This proves two things:

Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players,* to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infi nite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time .

Secondly, the Earth's a Libra.

The astrological prediction for Libra in the "Your Stars Today"

column of the Tadfi eld Advertiser , on the day this history begins, read as follows:

Libra. September 24?October 23.

You may be feeling run down and always in the same old daily round. Home and family matters are highlighted and are hanging fi re. Avoid unnecessary risks. A friend is important to you. Shelve major decisions until the way ahead seems clear. You may be vulnerable to a stomach upset today, so avoid salads. Help could come from an unexpected quarter.

This was perfectly correct on every count except for the bit about the salads.

It wasn't a dark and stormy night.

It should have been, but that's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is fi nished and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.

But don't let the fog (with rain later, temperatures dropping to around forty-fi ve degrees) give anyone a false sense of security. Just because it's a mild night doesn't mean that dark forces aren't abroad. They're abroad all the time. They're everywhere .

They always are. That's the whole point.

Two of them lurked in the ruined graveyard. Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded "Born to Lurk," these two would have been on the album cover. They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for a final burst of lurking around dawn.

Finally, after another twenty minutes, one of them said: "Bugger this for a lark. He should of been here hours ago."

The speaker's name was Hastur. He was a Duke of Hell.

Many Phenomena—wars, plagues, sudden audits—have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for Exhibit A.

Where they go wrong, of course, is in assuming that the wretched road is evil simply because of the incredible carnage and frustration it engenders every day.

In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds." The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around.

It was one of Crowley's better achievements. It had taken years to achieve, and had involved three computer hacks, two break-ins, one minor bribery and, on one wet night when all else had failed, two hours in a squelchy fi eld shifting the marker pegs a few but occultly incredibly signifi cant meters. When Crowley had watched the fi rst thirty-mile-long tailback he'd experienced the lovely warm feeling of a bad job well done.

It had earned him a commendation.

Crowley was currently doing 110 mph somewhere east of Slough. Nothing about him looked particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns, no wings. Admittedly he was listening to a Best of Queen tape, but no conclusions should be drawn from this because all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums. No particularly demonic thoughts were going through his head. In fact, he was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.

Crowley had dark hair and good cheekbones and he was wearing snakeskin shoes, or at least presumably he was wearing shoes, and he could do really weird things with his tongue. And, whenever he forgot himself, he had a tendency to hiss.

He also didn't blink much.

The car he was driving was a 1926 black Bentley, one owner from new, and that owner had been Crowley. He'd looked after it.

From AudioFile

Product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0054LJGWS
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; Reprint edition (June 28, 2011)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 28, 2011
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 5655 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 390 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0441003257
• #37 in Read & Listen for $14.99 or Less
• #80 in Satire Fiction
• #85 in Read & Listen for Less

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About the authors

Neil gaiman.

Neil Gaiman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, and The Graveyard Book. Among his numerous literary awards are the Newbery and Carnegie medals, and the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner awards. He is a Professor in the Arts at Bard College.

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was fifteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe. Terry worked for many years as a journalist and press officer, writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including his first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. In 1987 he turned to writing full time, and has not looked back since. To date there are a total of 36 books in the Discworld series, of which four (so far) are written for children. The first of these children's books, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal. A non-Discworld book, Good Omens, his 1990 collaboration with Neil Gaiman, has been a longtime bestseller, and was reissued in hardcover by William Morrow in early 2006 (it is also available as a mass market paperback (Harper Torch, 2006) and trade paperback (Harper Paperbacks, 2006). Terry's latest book, Nation, a non-Discworld standalone YA novel was published in October of 2008 and was an instant New York Times and London Times bestseller. Regarded as one of the most significant contemporary English-language satirists, Pratchett has won numerous literary awards, was named an Officer of the British Empire “for services to literature” in 1998, and has received four honorary doctorates from the Universities of Warwick, Portsmouth, Bath, and Bristol. His acclaimed novels have sold more than 55 million copies (give or take a few million) and have been translated into 36 languages. Terry Pratchett lived in England with his family, and spent too much time at his word processor. Some of Terry's accolades include: The Carnegie Medal, Locus Awards, the Mythopoetic Award, ALA Notable Books for Children, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Book Sense 76 Pick, Prometheus Award and the British Fantasy Award.

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Customers find the content clever, realistic, and never boring. They praise the writing quality as brilliant, effortless, and complementary. They describe the book as fun, entertaining, and perfect. Readers also find the humor witty, absurd, and warms the heart. They also describe the characters as great and affectionate. Customers describe the originality as imaginative, snarky, and incisive. However, some find the plot difficult to follow and irritating. Opinions are mixed on the pacing, with some finding it great and others saying it lurches.

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Customers find the book entertaining, with a good story. They also say the characters are loveable, honest, and bumbling. Readers also mention the book is absolutely perfect, with rich colors and curiosity.

"...At four hundred thirty-three pages, the novel is such a huge collection of very funny stuff and observations that it is best read in segments...." Read more

"...book that these writers weren't going to that and I ended up enjoying the book immensely . It made me laugh many times...." Read more

"...Crowley and Aziraphale take you on a wonderfully paced journey full of insights and witty observations on life...." Read more

"...I recommend that everyone view the miniseries, because it is wonderfully entertaining , in no small part due to tremendous performances by actors..." Read more

Customers find the content clever, thought-provoking, and interesting. They also say the characterization is well formed and lovely. Readers describe the resolution as thoughtful and well-reasoned. They say the book is never boring and contains many supernatural elements.

"...It is a cult classic and I am not going to waste a bunch of time trying to come up with superlatives not yet used...." Read more

"...The narrative is crisp, witty, sometimes thoughtful , generally humorous, and all ways entertaining...." Read more

"...the end of the world is not only uproariously funny, but a ruthlessly critical yet still affectionate look at human nature and its foibles and a..." Read more

"...the margins and font are both nice. very interesting cover lol" Read more

Customers find the humor in the book witty, irreverent, and hysterically funny. They say it never fails to induce a smile, laugh, and the occasional guffaw. Readers also mention that the book has a great atmosphere and warms the heart.

"...This is a hilarious, sarcastic, cynical , and absurd look at the fragility of human nature...." Read more

"...I thoroughly enjoyed GOOD OMENS. The book was full of classic Brittish wit coloured with good-old American humor and pop culture references...." Read more

"...take you on a wonderfully paced journey full of insights and witty observations on life ...." Read more

"...The narrative is crisp, witty , sometimes thoughtful, generally humorous, and all ways entertaining...." Read more

Customers find the writing quality brilliant, funny, and creative. They appreciate the properly placed italics, no typos, and nice margins and font. Readers also mention the record quality is wonderful and the pacing is vibrant and effortless.

"...the margins and font are both nice . very interesting cover lol" Read more

"I absolutely adore this book! The writing and storytelling pulls you in and makes you want more. And you get more- in the Amazon Prime series!..." Read more

"...and Aziraphale's lack of understanding is, in my opinion, one of the best written pages in the book." Read more

"...The record quality is wonderful , though the tarot styled cards were not what I was expecting...." Read more

Customers find the characters in the book great, lovely, and charming.

"...The cast of characters are wonderfully drawn , delightfully good and evil...." Read more

"...Pratchett and Gaiman have created a diverse and eccentric cast of characters ...." Read more

"...uproariously funny, but a ruthlessly critical yet still affectionate look at human nature and its foibles and a deep meditation on the nature of life..." Read more

"...This book has an amazing cast of characters , including Adam (the Antichrist), his friends (a collective known as "Them") and his Hellhound..." Read more

Customers find the book imaginative, quirky, and topical. They also appreciate the chaotic page turning uniqueness, twists, and turns. Readers also say the sets are Disneyesque, riveting, and realistic.

"...Overall, I'd say "Good Omens" is a blast if you like your books quirky , unexpected, and a little bit absurd." Read more

"...There's all kinds of ingenious little touches , like Crowley's obsession with his car, the hellhound sent to be a companion to Adam being..." Read more

"... This was quirky and a little on the odd side but totally fun. Heaven and Hell have basically been in a cold war for well forever it seems...." Read more

"...The characters are well-developed and imaginative , given that a number of them are not actually human...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some find it great up until the second to last chapter, and say it moves along nicely. However, others say it's a bit lurching and hard to follow.

"...The mayhem quotient is high and the action is fast-paced ...." Read more

"...is that the book has several characters, so at times it is a bit difficult to keep up with what is happening to whom and where...." Read more

"...does different voices, and he reads the narrative with an amazing sense of comic timing ...." Read more

"...The book is a fast read , never boring and it will leave you wanting more." Read more

Customers find the plot difficult to follow, meandering, repetitive, predictable, and tiresome. They also mention that the book has many footnotes within the story, but they have to surf to the back of the book. Readers also mention the lack of usual subtlety in character development.

"...The story is a bit sacrilegious , so I wouldn't recommend it to a crazy religious relative, but for anyone who has an interest in the occult, but..." Read more

"...I put it down a few times to read other things. First, the story sometimes meandered and jumps POVs a lot...." Read more

"...The narrator does different voices , and he reads the narrative with an amazing sense of comic timing...." Read more

"...Third, the plot sucks !! Satanic nuns? Angels and Demons in cahoots?? Messages through the radio from the underworld? Puh-leeeaaase...." Read more

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Screen Rant

Good omens season 3 tease gives me hope for crowley & aziraphale's future (but it's also worrying).

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Good Omens is preparing for its third and final season, and there’s a lot of anticipation around it thanks to season 2’s cliffhanger ending, but Michael Sheen’s tease is giving me hope for Crowley and Aziraphale’s future… but it’s also worrying. Amazon Prime Video has built its own catalog of TV shows, some more popular than others, and one of my favorites is Good Omens . Based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens premiered on Amazon Prime Video in 2019 with great success.

Season 1 of Good Omens was based on the novel and followed angel Aziraphale (Sheen) and demon Crowley (David Tennant) as they tried to stop the Antichrist from triggering the apocalypse. Four years later, Good Omens returned with its second season and an original story in which Aziraphale and Crowley teamed up again to discover what happened to Archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm), whose memory had been erased. Good Omens season 2 ended on a heartbreaking cliffhanger, and a recent tease for season 3 gives me hope for a happy ending, but it’s also worrying me.

Good Omens Timeline Explained: Everything That Happens In Chronological Order

Good Omens' eternity-spanning story is told out of order - and it gets quite confusing. Here's the full timeline in chronological order.

Michael Sheen's Season 3 Tease Gives Me Hope For A Happy Ending In Good Omens

Good omens season 2 ended on a heartbreaking cliffhanger.

After a couple of challenges, Aziraphale and Crowley found out what happened to Archangel Gabriel and learned he and Hell’s Beelzebub (Shelley Conn) had fallen in love. Gabriel and Beelzebub were sent to Alpha Centauri so they could carry on with their lives together without problems, but that left a spot open in Heaven and one in Hell. At the end of Good Omens season 2, the Metatron (Derek Jacobi) arrived at Aziraphale’s bookshop to offer him the role of supreme archangel of Heaven. This position allowed him to bring Crowley with him and make him an angel again, but Crowley wanted something different.

A recent tease from Michael Sheen is giving me hope that Good Omens will bring Aziraphale and Crowley back together in the final season.

Crowley struggled to come clean about his feelings for Aziraphale to the confused angel and ended up kissing him and telling him he wanted to stay with him on Earth. However, Aziraphale simply told him he forgave him and returned to Heaven with the Metatron while Crowley simply drove away. The future of Aziraphale and Crowley, both together and separately, is a mystery, but a recent tease from Michael Sheen is giving me hope that Good Omens will bring them back together in the final season.

Sheen and company being aware of the audience’s reaction and passion for the show gives me hope that they know what viewers want.

Speaking to TV Insider , Sheen shared his excitement about working with Tennant again and returning to Good Omens . Sheen mentioned that the fandom is one of the “extraordinary” things about being part of Good Omens, and that seeing their reaction to season 2’s ending was also extraordinary. Sheen added that he’s sure season 3 will be a satisfying experience for everyone . Sheen and company being aware of the audience’s reaction and passion for the show gives me hope that they know what viewers want and that the “satisfying experience” will lead to a well-deserved happy ending for Crowley and Aziraphale.

David Tennant Has Already Teased More Romance In Good Omens Season 3

Crowley & aziraphale’s romance is now key to good omens.

Tennant teased more kisses between Aziraphale and Crowley in Good Omens season 3 and more romance.

While story details for Good Omens season 3 are still a secret, David Tennant has teased more romance in the upcoming final season, and I’m deeply grateful for that. Speaking with Michelle Visage on the BAFTA TV Awards red carpet in May 2024 (via CBR ), Tennant teased more kisses between Aziraphale and Crowley in Good Omens season 3 and more romance. In that same talk, Tennant said season 3 will start shooting in January, so it’s only a matter of waiting for more details about it to be revealed.

There will surely be more challenges for them before they can reunite and reconcile.

However, given how season 2 ended, all those kisses and romance might not happen right away . Aziraphale and Crowley are not even in the same realm anymore, with the former in Heaven and the latter on Earth (for now, at least), and there will surely be more challenges for them before they can reunite and reconcile. Still, it’s relieving to know that Good Omens season 3 won’t forget about the love between its main characters and that they’re aiming for a satisfying ending, which I’m hoping means a “happy ending”.

Can Crowley & Aziraphale Really Get A Happy Ending In Good Omens Season 3?

Good omens season 3 might not make things easy for crowley & aziraphale.

I do believe Crowley and Aziraphale can get their happy ending in Good Omens season 3, but not without many obstacles and more pain.

As hopeful as Sheen’s words make me about a happy ending in Good Omens season 3, I feel there will be a lot more suffering before Aziraphale and Crowley can be together . The only thing that’s known about the plot of Good Omens season 3 is that it’s going back to the show’s roots and will feature another apocalypse, as teased by Gaiman himself . In addition to that, the ending of Good Omens season 2 teased the Second Coming, as the Metatron revealed it’s the next step in Heaven’s plans, and Aziraphale was visibly worried when he heard that.

I do believe Crowley and Aziraphale can get their happy ending in Good Omens season 3, but not without many obstacles and more pain (for both the audience and Aziraphale and Crowley) in the process. Aziraphale and Crowley might have to make some sacrifices to be together , perhaps giving up their immortality to live the most normal lives they ever had. A lot can happen in Good Omens season 3, but hopefully, everything will lead to Aziraphale and Crowley’s happy ending together.

Sources: TV Insider , CBR .

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Based on the bestselling novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens follows an angel and demon as they attempt to defy the forces of Heaven and Hell in order to avert the apocalypse. With Pratchett and Gaiman's funny and irreverent style shining through, Good Omens stars Michael Sheen and David Tennant as Aziraphale and Crowley, with a larger cast that includes John Hamm, Francis McDormand, and Michael McKean.

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‘Good Omens’ season 3 will have a ‘satisfying’ ending, according to Michael Sheen

The show's third season is still in development, but more updates should be coming soon..

After two successful seasons, the cast and crew of  Good Omens  is getting ready for one final go-round. The show’s battle-turned-love affair between angel and demon Aziraphale, and Crowley will come to an end with season 3, which Prime Video announced when it offered the renewal.

Now, Michael Sheen, one of the show’s two stars, has offered an update on the forthcoming ending and when we might get a chance to see it.

“It’s still in development, but obviously I’m very excited to work with David [Tennant] again, and I love that character. I’m very excited about it,” Sheen said in an interview with TV Insider , explaining that they didn’t have a shooting schedule yet.

“One of the extraordinary things about being a part of [Good Omens] is the audience, the fans, the fandom of it,” he added. “You have to take it very seriously because people get really affected by it. And seeing how people reacted to the end of Season 2 was extraordinary. So yeah, I hope, and I’m sure, that Season 3 will be a satisfying experience for everyone.”

While love will certainly be on the brain for many of the show’s fans headed into this final season, we also know that Aziraphale and Crowley have to work together to avert armageddon, so they can’t spend all their time kissing. Filming for the show’s third season is set to begin sometime in early 2025, which means we could see the season toward the end of the year or early in 2026. Until then, fans will just have to rewatch the episodes we have.

There are a number of different places you can trace our current moment of utter superhero cultural dominance back to. It could be 2002's Spider-Man, or 2000's X-Men, or 2008's Iron Man. If you go even further back, though, you could argue that the trend really started with 1989's Batman, which was directed by Tim Burton and starred Michael Keaton.

Burton directed that movie to tremendous success, and he also directed its first sequel, Batman Returns. Since leaving that franchise behind, though, Burton has not gone back to the superhero well, and thanks to a new interview with Variety, we now know why.

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How do you tailgate for the first time? It's all about the prep work if it is your first tailgate. Stick to the do's, keep a positive attitude, and be happy that you get to see your favorite band or team play, and it will be nothing but an awesome time. It's all about the energy you put out there, whether you are the point person or just bringing the ice. Tailgating parties are a community event, so jump in and be a contributing part of it. How does tailgating work? Tailgating works best when you not only follow social do's, but remember the don'ts. It isn't only about eating and drinking and then going to watch the game. To tailgate so everyone has fun, keep in mind you are with a group, and you all have to work together for it to work. It's sort of like a group project in school, everyone has something to bring to the table. Whether you're the grill master or in charge of the playlist, your job is important for the whole event to run smoothly. The do's of a tailgate party