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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman


Finished another book! It always made me feel good when I come to the end of any book I read. Well most of the exciting parts are usually around the end anyway. And it’s always nice to look back and assess the entirety of the whole story. What emotions it has roused in me, what was the lesson and overall impact as an entertainment tool.

So what about the book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett?? It’s a very funny book! It is like a spoof of the 1976 horror story/movie entitled “Omen”. So many characters intertwined together and converging at one point. If you have seen or read about the “Omen”, this story would be a piece of cake to follow through. It basically revolves around the birth of the antichrist, an angel, a devil, a witch and a witch finder. All intertwined towards the coming of the worlds end. It was a perfect plan until the switching of the two babies, one of which is the antichrist. The true antichrist having been switched and lost grew up to be a boy of eleven years old, his true powers undeveloped and suppressed. So in the end, he was more human than the son of Satan. I guess you can very well presume that the end of the world did not take place as planned. In between these events is the tandem of an angel named Aziraphale and a devil named Crowey. Having been assigned so long on Earth to oversee balance or unbalance of good and evil has made them understand humanity and thus became friends. They are the ones who do not believe that the great plan isn’t sounding so great at all. Then there is this witch who is a descendant of a well-known witch whose prophecies tend to become true in the weirdest way. It has been prophesized that the worlds end through an antichrist is coming.

Lessons! Although the story is riddled with funny and eccentric characters, beneath it speaks a lesson on humanity. The problem in the story is the coming of the anti Christ and the end of the world (human) and how to stop it. In the execution of the plan, something went wrong… amusingly wrong to be exact. The antichrist was left to his own devices while growing up that he was influenced more to became human instead of the devil he is. Hence, humanity endures.

This story almost had its chance to be a movie. And I read from wikipedia that it was planned to get Robin Williams to play the character of the angel and Jonny Depp for the devil. WOW! That would be so cool!! I hope it will get through. Some of Neil Gaimans stories that were able to make it to movie versions were “Stardust” and “Beowulf”. I’ve seen both movies and true enough, the Gaiman style prevails.

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