Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, 1990
You’ve gotta be kidding me!
Truthfully, I’m not worthy of writing a review on a novel with the depth of this caliber—but GOD I’ve gotta talk about it.
In the world in Good Omens, Earth is the playing field for, as they call it, a cosmic game of chess. 6,000 years ago, a representative was sent from Heaven—Aziraphale, angel—and a representative from Hell—Crowley, demon—tasked with swaying the board their way. Deeds, they call them, of good and evil, which, ironically, sometimes they’ll commit for one another if it’s convenient in the way of time and energy—they’ll be done anyway, the characters say.
Also, of these deeds, it’s noted that although Crowley and Aziraphale push these moral actions into motion, the humans, believe it or not, are a lot more creative (and therefore, brutal) in the deeds they commit on their own.
Fated from the very start, after 6,000 years, the Antichrist would be born, causing the Great War between Heaven and Hell (which, in some odd decision, as Aziraphale notes later, is to be held on earth) which will end the world and deem one side ruler. This event is here.
Crowley is sent to oversee the switch of babies at the hospital, which is intended to place the Antichrist with the correct, infernally chosen family; however, some incompetent nurses mix up the babies (in such a silly, human way), leaving the Antichrist to be raised without any “ineffable” intervention (this word is used as a motif in the novel, and as somewhat of an inside joke between us and the characters).
Crowley and Aziraphale, who, ironically, are both adversaries and pretty good friends—and a lot more similar than one would think (this is the point)—decide they don’t really want the world to end. If one side wins, life would be, well, boring.
So, Warlock (wrongly identified Antichrist, who’s name was suggested by a Satanic nurse—an incredible oxymoron) is raised in the family of an American Cultural Attaché, where he is sent, by the “ineffable,” a multitude of maids, nanny’s, gardeners, etc., of good and evil to raise him and sway him in either direction.
Despite the constancy of imposed moral forces on this child, Warlock turns out to be overwhelmingly…normal.
Crowley and Aziraphale are alarmed by his normalcy. Where he should have such power already at his young age that he’s feared by at least his close circle of people, the kid doesn’t seem to even have opinions. Remembering the aloofness of the Nurse at the hospital, Crowley is certain there was a mistake. He and Aziraphale intend to find the correct Antichrist, and intervene to the best they can (murder), before the Great War.
In other news, the only book which has the correct prophecy of Armageddon is Agnes Nutter’s The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutters (1655), held in possession by her occultist descendant, Anathema. Anathema has spent her whole life reading and abiding by this book. She knows that Judgement Day is imminent.
Newton Pulsifier, average awkward nerd, is bored with life and comes across an ad for a witchfinder by a very serious witchfinder named Shadwell. He gets the job.
And Adam, the real Antichrist, was raised in the English town of Tadfield (where Anathema’s cottage is), as the leader of his friend group of 4 (referred to by the town as the Them).
In the days before Armageddon, they converse, as kids do, about raining fish, frog-like aliens, whales, Tibetans, the lost city of Atlantis, you name it, which all become real phenomena in some crazy storm in the town of Tadfield, drawing Newton Pulsifier to it (as well as Crowley and Aziraphale, who have figured out that Tadfield is where the Antichrist is).
Suddenly, in the hours before the end of the world, Adam is hearing whispers—which are the voices of himself, but unsettling nonetheless—about ruling the world. He convinces his friends they should all rule together (in a somewhat creepy manner), and so the Them, the angel and demon, the witch and witchfinder, as well as the human manifestations of War, Famine, Pollution, and Death (the Horsemen of the Apocalypse), all head to the nuclear center in town where it’s been prophetically told the world will end by the start of a human nuclear war.
A large space in the novel delineates the incredibly chaotic, ridiculous, and hilarious journeys of these characters, and, in the end, the Them faces the Horsemen of the Apocalypse in battle. Before vanishing them (all except death), Adam concludes that although they’re his people (being that he is the Antichrist), his friends (this earth) are also his people. And Crowley and Aziraphale come to the realization that since the Antichrist was raised as a human—with no divine nor infernal intervention—he is, first and foremost, only human. Neither wholly good or wholly bad.
Simultaneously, Newton and Anathema turn back on the world’s electricity, which the Horsemen of the Apocalypse have turned off. There’s also a quasi-romance between the two of them—awkward and probably not the kind of romance you or I are pining for, but still a logical addition to the story, as love is one of the main forces of good and evil.
The voice of god and the voice of satan (the representatives of God and Satan) appear, after the failed Armageddon, to chastise their incompetent earthly ambassadors and intervene, since Crowley and Aziraphale are clearly not pushing along the ineffable climax the way they’ve been tasked to. The Voices tell Adam he has to choose a winning side, and Adam says listen guys, why must the world end? You don’t really want that, do you? (This is not verbatim).
Adam, in his 11 year old verbiage, comes up with a beautiful analogy of a bully from school, who, although he and the Them would love to beat, wouldn’t actually.If there was no bully, it would be only the Them against one another. In other words, it’s human nature for there to be tension, and why must the “ineffable” play on that tension if they’re the ones (being the creators) who have made humans in this way.
Adam, being the Antichrist, but also, an 11 year old child, is weighed down by his humanity. He says he is fascinated with the world, and he wants to continue living in it and learning from it.
The Metatron (the voice of God) is, well, kind of pissed. Earlier, when Aziraphale had suggested that they stop Armageddon, the Metatron says, no don’t you get it, Heaven doesn’t need to stop the war, Heaven needs to win the war. But since they have no choice in what the Antichrist decides, they say yeah we’ll definitely report back. And so the world goes back to normal.
Aziraphale and Crowley wonder if the Great War and the Ineffable War weren’t one and the same to begin with—maybe this Armageddon failure was just a little part, but it was part of a major plan that no one knows yet.
The last scene is Adam being a kid. He feels the end of summer, and even though he’s grounded after the events of the day before (which no one remembers completely, they all just know something happened), he goes out to play anyway because he’s living in the now, not in the later. And then our silly boy Adam eats an apple from his neighbor’s tree.
Now, sure, this review is nothing to the book, because it was the funniest thing I’ve read to date, and you’ve gotta experience that sardonic tone to get the full effect. But, in all seriousness, I can’t stop thinking about the themes and questions which Good Omens posits.
My biggest takeaway is that humanity is, by its definition, a species of free will. While the voices of God and Satan are telling Adam that a side has to be chosen because it’s already been written out, he says, in one of my favorite lines of dialogue, that that can just be erased—so totally human, and, well, totally true. There doesn’t have to be “fate.” That’s the beauty of humanity—we do it all ourselves.
It seems that divine fate contradicts the idea of living. People are both good and evil (so are Aziraphale and Crowley), and that balance will, ultimately, always overthrow either force on its own.
In the confrontation between the voices of God and Satan versus Adam, good and evil are, quite literally, together against the balance of good and evil—or, better, the nullification of good and evil, as Adam doesn’t seem to be either. He’s just a person.
Crowley and Aziraphale allude to a later, possible ineffable war, of humanity against divinity, and I think that, too, is what the author’s have meant to analogize. We’re in a war with a religion that doesn’t make much sense—why did God make us inquisitive and then dangle an apple off a tree that we can’t eat? (Crowley asks).
Another interesting thought is that if God is all-knowing and omniscient, why was there ever a break in good to make way for evil? Crowley posits this, and suggests God possibly isn’t all that “good” to begin, but I think it also begs the question if maybe God isn’t all as powerful as we think.
This book is really a blast—the perfect balance of depth that makes reading so satisfying, and humor to make it enjoyable. 5/5.
Trigger Warnings: I was not offended by anything and can’t recall any specific thing which could be taken offensively, but be warned this novel is filled with sardonic, dry humor and if you’re sensitive to those kinds of jokes (specifically, Religions), this book may not be for you.
Quotes:
And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.
He’d been an angel once. He hadn’t meant to Fall. He’d just hung around with the wrong people.
It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.
Aziraphale. The Enemy, of course. But an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him sort of a friend.
Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.
“You see, evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction,” said the angel.
He’d sat in all sorts of churches, waiting for that single flash of blue light, and it hadn’t comen. And then he’d tried to become an official Atheist and hadn’t got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that.
He looked like how Victorian Romantic poets looked just before the consumption and drug abuse really started to cut it.
And on the other hand you got people like Ligur and Hastur, who took such a dark delight in unpleasantness you might even have mistaken them for human.
…they all stood there in the light and the heat of the burning bookshop, wondering what was happening to a world they had thought they understood.
Bits of her kept appearing and disappearing, like a conjurer’s hands; Newt kept trying to count her nipples and failing, although he didn’t mind.
Because, underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times—he thought briefly of the fourteenth century—then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him.
“That’s right,” said Pepper. “Because,” she added, “if we beat them, we’d have to be our own deadly enemies.”
Here and there cities make knots in the web but most of the electricity is, as it were, mere musculature, concerned only with crude work. But for fifty years or so people have been giving electricity brains.
“I don’t see what’s so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin’ upset ‘cos they act like people.”
Then he said: “I don’t see why it matters what is written. Not when it’s about people. It can always be crossed out.”
“Just remember I’ll have known that, deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking.”
In the end, as every human being who has ever breakfasted on their own in someone else’s kitchen has done since nearly the dawn of time, he made do with unsweetened instant black coffee.
Something told him that something was coming to an end. Not the world, exactly. Just the summer. There would be other summers, but there would never be one like this. Ever again.
Better make the most of it, then.
