Thoughts
Just finished *Good Omens*. I gave it 3/5 stars. I took off a star for style, half a star for the ending, and half a star for blasphemy.
I've read only a short story by Pratchett, and *The Graveyard Book* by Gaiman.
My three critiques blend together. The style of the book is very erratic, it reads like a bunch of short stories concatenated. Like the whole book is introducing the characters, and building up to something, but it feels like nothing actually advances the plot. The characters have very little agency. The human characters are written as powerless and ignorant, and the supernatural characters are written as mysterious and vague. There's a lot of passive voice. The humor is fine, but far from the funniest thing I've read. If it's supposed to be a comedy, then that would explain why I didn't enjoy it.
It's definitely not boring. I understand why someone would like it a lot, or why it would receive critical acclaim. It does a lot of interesting things, ambitious things, and it pulls them off, for the most part. It just doesn't do the things that I would want it to do. The 4 horsemen are very well written; they're aloof, interesting, and terrifying. But they're not relatable, and I would prefer a book with relatable villains. The book is, in large part, written from the perspective of 2 side-characters. This is something most books don't do, because it's not easy. The problem here, is that the main (side) characters are well-developed and relatable, but they don't do anything. I don't care.
Without going into spoilers, the ending is anti-climactic. There's no final battle, everyone just kind of stands in a circle and half of them talk.
When *Good Omens* constantly refers to Christian terms ('angel', 'demon', etc), as well as the Bible, I end up with certain expectations. And the authors were constantly subverting those expectations. It just left me off guard for a majority of the book. They don't just re-define a few terms, they operate in a completely different system ('what if good wasn't actually good?!'), and it took me most of the book to realize that. It's not a whole-star issue, but it combines with the plot issue and the fact that the authors avoided saying anything outright.
It's a good book. And in some ways, the 3 stars doesn't reflect that. The 3 stars reflects my enjoyment of it. I wouldn't re-read it.