Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

This is a very silly books and silly books usually appeal to silly people. I turn out to be one of them (not that I'm calling myself a silly book, I hope you understand what I mean) and so I enjoyed Good Omens immensely. The cover in the paperback edition displays a statement that fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will probably find it enjoyable, which is probably true. The setting of the story is, spatially, Britain, and temporally, when the end of the world has come.

The story starts out mocking the classic birth-of-the-anti-christ (am I screwing up capitalization here?) "The Omen" and will get you laughing out loud from the get-go. That is, if you're silly enough to appreciate it. Throughout the story, you'll be introduced to a whole bunch of characters, some of them minor (which could be a bit distracting if you let yourself go), but two major ones are Crowley, a fallen angel who acts as Satan's agent on Earth, and Aziraphale, a not-fallen-by-the-leastest-bit angel, who acts as God's agent. They're not so much enemies, but sort of pawns in the cosmic battle of good vs. evil and understand that their actions must bring Armageddon, when all diferences will be finally resolved and some kind of winner will be appointed. The problem is, they have come to like humanity and don't really want to bring about the end of the world. Other interesting characters are the 11-year old anti-Christ, the descendent of a prophetess who has foreseen pretty much everything that's happens as the end approaches, and the head of a dwindling witch-hunting army.

Readers of other Neil Gaiman books will find that the intangible familiar quality they are used to is also in this book. The language is perhaps not quite like that of other Gaiman's books and the lighter, more outrageous humour probably comes from Pratchett. Something in the book, though, is definitely Gaiman's. Maybe it's the way the universe is set up, the way it feels like reality with subtle dark distortions. In any case, the book is great and I really didn't want it to end, but as all books do, it did and, eventually, I had to move on to read something else.