Good Omens
The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Ratings1,383
Average rating4.2
I laughed on almost every single page. Its amazingly written and very nuanced. It has lots of brilliant forshadowing. Basically everything about this good is great. The ending was a tiny bit predictable but that's okay.
Perfect book for waiting out a super typhoon, especially if there is a beer vending machine three floors below you.
I'm confused. I love Neil Gaiman's works. I don't understand why I didn't like this one. My only theory is having to do with the execution of the premise. I would have loved it if the book only centered around Zira and Crowley. But it's all the extra characters that made me bored.
“Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in you own home.”
Boven en beneden besluiten dat het nu dan toch eens tijd is voor Armageddon, maar dan blijkt dat een een engel (en part-time boekhandelaar) en een demon per ongeluk de Antichrist zijn kwijtgeraakt.
Neil Gaiman kende ik al een klein beetje, Terry Pratchett kan ik nu met goed fatsoen niet langer negeren. Erg grappig, een beetje in de stijl van Douglas Adams. Met fijne voetnoten, waaronder bijvoorbeeld eentje die de Amerikaanse lezers uitlegt hoe het zit met Milton Keynes...
An excellent audio adaptation of Good Omens! I was delighted to hear some familiar voices amongst the cast, and the fantastic sound design helped immerse me into the story further. If you are a fan of the show, I think you will enjoy this dramatisation.
This was a fun book to read. I found it light and easy to get through although the ending felt too fast. There are a lot of small parts that I enjoyed that I kept thinking about after. This is more British humor and can be dry at times.
The books pacing and additional details are the only things that slightly bothered me. For pacing the beginning is slow but once you get to the last third of the book there just wasn’t enough time to enjoy the story. For the additional details there are good additions to the main characters back stories or side stories but it can be too much. There are characters we are introduced to that have no weight on the story and aren’t funny/witty additives.
I liked the book and decided to watch the show afterwards. The first season was great although there was of course some changes to the story. I would recommend this book to others.
I can see why so many people love Good Omens, but for me, it just didn't click. And I typically like Pratchett books, so it's not that.
At first, I thought this book had so much potential. The premise is very clever. Crowley and Aziraphale's odd-couple dynamic is by far the best part of the story, and I could have happily spent the entire book following their adventures. But despite these bright spots, the book just didn't hold together for me. It tries to juggle too many threads and ends up losing focus. It tries to be too many things. The shift to the young anti-Christ and his group of friends was especially boring, as their conversations felt flat and uninspired.
The humor, while sharp at first, eventually wore thin. It's like spending hours with that one friend who's always trying to be funny all the time—at some point, you just want to say “Relax, Tony.” The pacing didn't help either; it skips quickly through some interesting setups and then drags painfully in others, especially during the final stretch leading up to doomsday. By the end, I was skimming pages, frustrated that something with so much promise felt like such a slog.
The broken English from some of the characters, but in particular Adam and Shadwell was also quite annoying after a while and didn't let me connect with the book as much as I wanted to.
The TV adaptation managed to capture what the book couldn't for me. It kept the wit and charm but brought the characters to life in a way that felt much more engaging. Maybe that was the intention all along. If you're curious about the story, I'd honestly recommend watching the show instead.
Audio book version with 14 year old son on a road trip. We were constantly laughing for most of it. Resolves nicely too and feels complete.
I saw the TV series and loved it. And I'm a fan of both Gaiman and Pratchett, so reading the original story was essential.
The TV followed the book much more than most adaptations and the two are slavishly similar. However, the TV 'final conflict' scenes between the boy, the four horsemen, and the devil are much better than the book's portrayal.
Ha sido un viaje muy agradable, he amado todas y cada una de las referencias, tanto de cultura como de religión. Ha hecho que me interesará durante todo el trayecto el cuál hubiera querido leer de más seguido.
Fan de Crowley y Azirafel en general. La vibra que se manejan es genial para mi.
4☆
If you ever chuckled at a Monty Python movie or while reading Hitchhiker's, you're gonna really enjoy this book. Charming, witty and absurd.
I'm very glad that Neil returned to these ineffable husbands 30 years later and said “But what if they were gay?”. Ally.
This is the second Terry Pratchett book that I've read, and I definitely thought this one was funnier than the last. I definitely enjoyed it more than I expected to, considering it's a comedy about Armageddon and the Antichrist. Won't reread it though.
Age range: 16+
Probably confusing to younger readers.
i read this bc of an aftg good omens au fic lol. ngl this had excellent humor (still the middle parts got kinda boring soo 4 stars ig).??
This is Monty Python's version of the apocalypse and Revelation. If that sounds good to you, then you'll definitely enjoy it. The ending also ties in some ideas about how we as humanity think about the end of our world and how we don't, and I appreciated that reminder as an anything-but-subtle moral of the story in a novel where subtlety is nowhere to be found.
The only critique I have is more preference-based and it's the wild structure. I found it difficult to feel like I could set aside the novel because of its strange “chapter” breaks that are inconsistent in length. It does help the flow when I'm reading, but it drastically hurts my head when trying to reach a good stopping point.
3.5 stars
It's the kind of humour I enjoy. However, I was hoping for a bit more depth coming from the TV show, but it seems to be just that surface level.
A bit of a slow pace for a book about the Apocalypse approaching. feels like the pace picks up only in the last 50 or so pages and then just ends. On the whole, this book is amusing and fun to read.
I loved Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship. It was the kind of “friendship” that is unique in the way that it has lasted centuries and I was so invested in them.
i usually struggle listening to audiobooks because i am ~easily distracted, but all the familiar voices in this one really helped (david tennant<3 michael sheen<3 arthur darvill<3). i also often find the narration quite distant and unnatural, but rebecca front did a wonderful job and was so fitting as the Narrator. (probably also helped that i knew the story from the show and so didn???t have to spend as much brain power keeping track of the various storylines). overall great fun and honestly just really made me want to 1) read more neil gaiman and terry pratchett and 2) rewatch the show