It’s back to blog writing properly for me after a two year absence and a lot of real life drama. On the plus side, things are starting to settle for me so I’ve finally reached a stage where I can take this reading challenge on once more. I aim to be far more pragmatic in my approach this time so I won’t boast that I’m going to complete it. I’ll save boasting for one year from now.
Now, unless you’ve been blissfully isolated in a world lacking televisions, radio or most types of communication you will be aware of today’s troubles: namely of the Corona Virus kind. I was often told that, when life hands you lemons you go grab a bag of sugar so you can make some half decent lemonade. And one bonus of several weeks’ worth of quarantine is that you have plenty of time to read all those books that have been gathering dust on those shelves!
So, with that in mind I’m on to this week’s book; the first of 52 hopefully.
Good Omens was officially introduced to me with the viewing of the mini-series that was on the BBC. The acting was brilliant, the script, tightly written with no throwaways and the humour was right up my street. So I thought what I always do when there’s a book/t.v adaptation: I should get the book so that I can judge which is better.
I must confess that Good Omens the book was a bit of a slow starter. Written by the late Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman it tells the story of Aziraphale and Crowley, an angel and demon who enjoy life on Earth just that little bit too much. They are thrown into tumult when the ineffable plan to release the Antichrist triggers the countdown to Armageddon.
The world will end on a Saturday afternoon, when the son of Satan reaches the pinnacle of his power and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are summoned to his side. Throw in two witch finders, a very real witch and a few other rather eccentric side characters and you get comical cosmic chaos!
The reason I struggled with it at first is down to the writing style, it definitely has more echoes of Pratchett than Gaiman. I don’t want to use the word satire as I feel it is a little too critical. But with footnotes on every other page in an effort to further amuse the reader, it had a stop/start feel that was tough to get through. But I persevered and I’m glad I did.
As the story snowballs towards it’s incredible climax, the character development is superb and the story flows effortlessly. It gets less and less obvious in terms of trying to distinguish who is writing which bits.
It’s ending is beautiful, I could almost feel the story being tied up in a wonderful, heart-warming little bow. I actually sighed when I finished the last line!
I would recommend it to anyone, I’d just say try the series first as it’s brilliant hearing certain characters and getting their image in your head when you read! As for which is better? Well I’m clearly only going to give one answer, can you guess which one?
Book 1 of 52 and my young adult book.
