Book Review - 'Good Omens' by Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman

Well, all I've got to say at this point in time - just after finishing this, in fact - is:

'Good Omens' is a fast-paced, rollicking, easily-digestible, clever, creative, and bloody hilarious book, that is unfortunately peppered here and there with casual sexism, racism, and homophobia - do NOT get me stated on the homophobia - from 1990. It is funny enough that I might have overlooked the problematic content and thought, "It's from the eighties, in Britain, and written by a couple of straight white men, what did you expect? And what can you do?", if not for the worst and most unfunny joke about burning gay people I have ever seen/read on page 336 in my copy of the book. How that has not been edited out in later editions, I don't know; and I am fervently against censorship, believe me. Only these sorts of "jokes" get people hurt. Even killed. That just destroyed my enjoyment of 'Good Omens' for good. That and the most anticlimactic ending I have read in ages.

And Aziraphale and Crowley needed more page time together.

Looks like Armageddon and the End of the World can be hilarious and enlightening (and British; America doesn't own everything big and exciting, you know). If only it were less hypocritical. And dated (though the book does contain elements that show that it's definitely ahead of its time... but in others not so much.)

So 'Good Omens' is a fun read that can be inhaled eagerly in two days' worth of free time. However, if you ask me, the 2019 television miniseries adaptation is an improved, updated version. There are no homophobic slurs in that, for one.

Final Score: 3/5

EDIT: What in the name of all that is holy and unholy and in-between, is up with Adam suddenly having a sister on pages 131-132? Sarah, the nondescript sister, is literally not mentioned before nor after those pages, ever. She is said to have a boyfriend whom she has been abroad with, so we can presume she is older than Adam's eleven years, and yet his father gave the deliberate impression of expectant fatherhood at the beginning, when the babies are born at the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl hospital. Except for an extremely vague "One kid already" line, concerning the mother (who is not a character in the book - she is given no speaking role nor description), and a line about the father not having held a baby in years. But surely having a progeny already would have been popped in at the beginning somewhere and much more clearly. Apparently not. But why? What's the point? Why give Adam an older sibling at all if you're not going to do anything with them? And not even have them appear in the story once? It's bugging me to no end. This book does need editing in a few places, now that I think about it.