This book, a novel co-written by none other than two of the biggest cleverest funniest most inventive authors in modern British pop-fantasy comedy - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - is, if you know who they are, exactly as good (if not better) as you'd expect such a collaborative work to be. It's a decently-long novel but I steamed through it in three days (of evening reading, as daytime-reading is still given over to dissertation non-fiction, as you may have gathered from the fact that this blog has basically become just about Kurdistan lately) because it's just so flipping excellent.
To sum up what it's about - the end of the world is nigh, but the Antichrist becomes misplaced, and so an angel called Aziraphale, a demon called Crowley, the last living descendant of Agnes Nutter (a witch who predicted very nice-and-accurately all the things that would happen in the runup to all of this) and the last living descendant of the witch-finder who burned Agnes Nutter at the stake, all find themselves trying to prevent a cockup of literally apocalyptic dimensions. To say this novel is irreverent would be both completely technically true and a gross misjudgement of the value of being able to laugh at stuff - literally using the eschatological framework of the Biblical account from the prophesy of Revelation, adapted by Gaiman-Pratchett imagination to real-world workings that are as hilarious as they are commonsense and as through-provoking as they are almost throwaway; this novel is just jam-packed with incredibly clever and incredibly funny characters, plot elements, turns of phrase, and just generally ridiculously well-concocted fictional happenings set against the backdrop of Christian world-endingness.
I don't really have any strong thoughts or reactions to it - apart from that it's brilliant and you would probably love it, given a particular sense of humour. Like, if the idea that the apocalyptic horseman Famine would have spent most of the later-twentieth century developing middle-class hyper-health-conscious diet schemes and supplements to stave off boredom while waiting for the show to begin strikes you as funny, then this is the book for you.
Edit [August 16th]: I don't flipping believe it. I literally finished this book, that's been out for over a quarter of a century, less than a fortnight ago, and then something incredible like this happens... hopefully it will be a better screen-adaptation than Neverwhere.
[edit - July 2019]: I just had to sign up for a free Amazon Prime account to be able to see this, which much like the book I binged in a sitting or two. They did it justice. Still not as good as the book as these things almost never are but it comes closer than most.
To sum up what it's about - the end of the world is nigh, but the Antichrist becomes misplaced, and so an angel called Aziraphale, a demon called Crowley, the last living descendant of Agnes Nutter (a witch who predicted very nice-and-accurately all the things that would happen in the runup to all of this) and the last living descendant of the witch-finder who burned Agnes Nutter at the stake, all find themselves trying to prevent a cockup of literally apocalyptic dimensions. To say this novel is irreverent would be both completely technically true and a gross misjudgement of the value of being able to laugh at stuff - literally using the eschatological framework of the Biblical account from the prophesy of Revelation, adapted by Gaiman-Pratchett imagination to real-world workings that are as hilarious as they are commonsense and as through-provoking as they are almost throwaway; this novel is just jam-packed with incredibly clever and incredibly funny characters, plot elements, turns of phrase, and just generally ridiculously well-concocted fictional happenings set against the backdrop of Christian world-endingness.
I don't really have any strong thoughts or reactions to it - apart from that it's brilliant and you would probably love it, given a particular sense of humour. Like, if the idea that the apocalyptic horseman Famine would have spent most of the later-twentieth century developing middle-class hyper-health-conscious diet schemes and supplements to stave off boredom while waiting for the show to begin strikes you as funny, then this is the book for you.
Edit [August 16th]: I don't flipping believe it. I literally finished this book, that's been out for over a quarter of a century, less than a fortnight ago, and then something incredible like this happens... hopefully it will be a better screen-adaptation than Neverwhere.
[edit - July 2019]: I just had to sign up for a free Amazon Prime account to be able to see this, which much like the book I binged in a sitting or two. They did it justice. Still not as good as the book as these things almost never are but it comes closer than most.
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