Good Omen

Good Omens by: Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaimen 1990 Workman Publishing, New York Report by Duncan Brown 10/25/1993

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen is about the end of the world, well... the near end of the world. You see, the Anti-Christ and the representatives of Heaven and Hell have decided that they like the planet and they want it to be around for a while longer, this doesn't go along with the grand scheme of things and confusion reigns supreme. The Anti-Christ is named Adam, he is a rather ordinary child who is inspired and captivated by about anything, for about 5 minuets. He is joined by Pepper a fiery red headed girl around his own age, Brian and Wenslydale who basically follow anything that Adam says with little or no argument, together they make up a gang that is known as the Them. Newt Pulsifer is a man without direction so he decides to join the witch finder group, Newt is the kind of man that cannot do too much right in his life, he buys the kind of things that go obsolete within the week that they are shipped in. Dog is the Hellhound that is supposed to look after Adam for the rest of his life, but becomes more interested in hunting down insects and other smaller creatures. The representatives are Aziphrale and Crowley, Crowley is the representative of hell who likes the good things in life like fast cars, VCRs and drinking bars, Aziphrale is the representative of heaven and has the world's largest collection of rare books except for one, Agnus Nutter's Nice and Accurate Prophecies, but we'll get into that later. Anthema Device is Agnus Nutter's descendant who has the only remaining copy of the book, but looses it. The Four Horsemen (actually it's three horsemen and one horsewoman) DEATH, War, Famine, and Pestilence are doing exactly what their names say. So much for the players, now for the game. We start off the story with Crowley bringing Adam to the Chattering Order's hospital in the middle of England for the switch of Adam and two other innocents, they get mixed up at the "hospital". Adam, who is supposed to go with a rich American who has some business in the British Isles but is sent with Mr. and Ms Young. Azaphraile and Crowley are supposed to influence the child. They find out 11 years later that they have been trying to influence the wrong child by noticing that the Hell hound doesn't show up at the child's party. The Hellhound finds Adam and his crew at a pit that has become their

main hangout spot and is magically changed to whatever Adam thinks that his dog should look like, and then comes the time of truth, the naming of the Hellhound. After a tense moment, Adam tells them exactly what he would name it, and it was Dog. Now instead of being huge, gruesome, and mean, Dog is small, furry, has a bent ear and is pretty much the cutest mutt that you could ever see. Needless to say, Dog was disappointed but quickly adapted to what he was now. That evening, Azaphraile and Crowley are driving through the British countryside without the use of headlights. Anthema Device is riding her bike down the same road going in the opposite direction of,the Demon and Angel. Bang. Anthema is thrown clear of the road with a fractured arm and a broken bicycle. With a sweep of his hand, Azaphraile fixes the bike, mends her arm and makes a bike rack with tartan straps, Anthema is too dazed to know what is really going on, so in that state of confusion she forgets the book o' prophicies prophecies that was given to her. After dropping her and her bike off at her abode, Azaphrale discovers the book in the back of the car and doesn't tell Crowley about his discovery. Azaphrale spends about half of a day reading the book and mutters the occasional "brilliant", but not much else. During the time that Azaphrale had the book to read, Crowley was extraordinarily worried about what he was going to do with his superiors because he had goofed with the babies. Another thing that was going on was that Newt finally meets Anthema by getting into a car crash because he swerved in order to miss a Tibetan that just happened to pop up out of a tunnel that he was mysteriously teleported into by none other than Adam. It's at this time that Adam starts thinking about what was in the magazines that Anthema had loaned to him the previous day, stories about saving the whales and protecting the ozone, but most importantly about the lost continent of Atlantis and how it disappeared. Adam gets very fired up about this one day and starts preaching about it, as he is doing so storm clouds start to form and the Them realize that Adam is more than they originally thought. It is at this time that Adam lets his imagination run free and the world is a stranger place because of it. By the way, Atlantis surfaces. Now for the Four Horsepersons, they all meet at a small diner in the middle of the English countryside. There is one difference between the Four that are depicted in the bible and the ones that are in the book, these horsepeople ride motorcycles, wear leather, and fly. Their names are War, Famine, Pestilence and DEATH. In this diner they are joined by four other motorcycle riders. The new four decide to give themselves names of new terrible things of the modern day, like Really Obnoxious People. We'll join the 8 horsepeople later, at the climax of the story. Let's get back to Anthema and Newt, since this is the first time that Newt has ever been in such close proximity to a woman and they weren't in an argument nor was she a public servant, he was having thoughts about her that were totally alien to him. Sexual thoughts. She was having quite similar thoughts about him, but they went along the lines of "Well, he is the last person that I will ever see again on the Earth, and he isn't all that bad looking..". They were going over plans and the notecards that have been made up over the years that served as a translation of what Agnus was trying to say, we are told that Agnus's paranormal abilities were so specific and limited that they were almost totally useless because you would only understand it after the event had actually happened. It was like looking at a huge tapestry through a paper towel tube, you can only see a small part of the whole picture, but

you could see alot of detail. Instead of standing around and procrastinate, they decide to do something about the end of the world (which is about 4 hours away). Back to Adam and his crew, Adam knows that he has a job to do, but he has no idea what it is. He leads the Them to a Nuclear Armory. They don't know it, but they are being followed by Newt and Anthema. The 8 horsepeople are also there, but they are about 30 minutes late for the big one. Adam's theory about how to make the world right is to start it all over, and he decides to do just that by setting off some nuclear weapons. Not good. With very little time to spare, Newt and Anthema try frantically to destroy the machine, but no matter what Newt does, the machinery seems to work. Maybe even better than before. It is then that Anthema has a brainstorm, why not have Newt try to fix the machine, he always has bad luck with whatever he does. She instructs him to do so and in turn destroys the guidance systems of the missiles. Now the four horsemen arrive in front of the military installation (the other four couldn't fly, so they couldn't keep up with the others) and have it out with the Them. War, Famine and Pestilence are defeated bye members of the Them, but DEATH is left standing, DEATH is eternal. After the battle, God and the Devil himself Appear in front of Adam and try to persuade him to end it all, they are in for a surprise. Adam decides that the world is better left alone than destroyed, and he's going to help it become a better place to live in. Azaphrale and Crowley are quite happy with this decision because they would be in big trouble with the big guys (God and the Devil) because of how Armageddon was botched. Newt doesn't get the girl, but that isn't a surprise, he has no luck with anything anyway. DEATH goes on doing exactly what he always does. Everybody lives happily ever after, except Newt who gets absolutely nothing, save the memories. The conflict in this story is man against nature, or more appropriately, man against the supernatural. In my opinion, this was a very good book throughout, but it didn't live up to the claims on the cover of being a direct ancestor of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. All it had in common with it was that they were both written by and English author(s). One problem with this book was that it seemed to be censored at parts where it may have had strong language, this was done by summarizing the paragraph in one or two sentences. I give it a B.