Good Omens

At long-last I am blogging again. I've finally read a blogable book: "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Niel Gaiman. This book chronicles the end of the world, with some variations. The Antichrist is switched at birth and raised by a nice middle-class family, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride motorcycles, and the two angels orchestrating the whole thing have grown attached to the world and don't want it to end. Like Pratchett's other books, there are several one-liners that make one laugh out loud. A few of my favorites (but not enough of them to spoil the book):

"God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."

"It wasn't a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but there's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime."

"Mr Young hadn't had to quiet a screaming baby for years. He'd never been much good at it to start with. He'd always respected Sir Winston Churchill, and patting small versions of him on the bottom had always seemed ungracious."

"The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly."

This book also has some of the less-appealing aspects of Pratchett's work in general. The plot runs slowly in some parts, the climax in the plot is a bit confusing, there are several groups of characters to keep track of, and the ending is anticlimatic. However, the characters are well-developed, and the British Satire is at its finest. I recommend Terry Pratchett's other books as well as "Good Omens" to anybody who enjoys a humorous read. I hope I've done it justice in my review.