I wanted to read this book for a while. I love Neil Gaiman but I’ve never read Terry Pratchett and this seemed like the best of both worlds. In high school, I steered very clear of Pratchett. He was far too uncool for me. Now that I read fantasy and science fiction so much it seems odd that I ever held such an opinion. Needless to say, this book has been on my list for a while.
This is also one of the first audiobooks I purchased. I bought it years ago because my wife and I listened to The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman while driving and really enjoyed it. Sure, we were in separate cars and we were moving across the country, but I bought Good Omens as a book to listen to with her on our next long trip. Well, that didn’t happen. We found it very difficult to listen to while in the passenger seat so it remained unread for a few years.
Earlier this year I saw the photo from the set of the Neil Gaiman-run Good Omens show with Michael Sheen and David Tennant. I knew I wanted to read the book before the show came out so I moved it up in my arbitrary queue. During a lull from available library books, I finally listened to it.
I liked it. Mostly a lot. I loved parts of it. The humor is very British, IMO, in that it is dry and little absurdist. I enjoy that a great deal but I just can’t say that I loved the book. I found myself glad that I didn’t listen to it with my wife as I don’t think she’d have enjoyed it. It may have been my expectations and all the years of waiting to read it, but it felt like a little bit of a letdown. It’s kind of life imitating art in this case as the apocalypse in the book was rather anti-climactic as well.
All in all, it was a fine read. I still plan to try more Pratchett in the future and I’ll read anything Gaiman writes.
I kind of had the same reaction to this years ago – moments of brilliance but overall just fine. I also avoided for Pratchett for years because one of my more pretentious exes was a fan. The set photos from Good Omens with Uncle Terry’s hat inspired me to finally read him.
If you’re into Shakespeare and Macbeth, you might like Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters. He is definitely less action packed than I am used to from fantasy, (is cozy fantasy a term? Because that is almost what he feels like) but he has some great lines and character insights. After two of his novels, I still have more of a “sure, why not” attitude towards him rather than “must read author” but I’d say he’s worth a shot.