Books of 2008, Part V

Yesterday afternoon I finished Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. This is the only non-Discworld book of Pratchett's that I've read, although you wouldn't necessarily know it's not a Discworld book when you read it. Death's in it, and he even speaks in all caps.

Anyway, this is a story of Armageddon. The forces of Heaven and Hell are massing, the "Great Ineffable Plan" is moving forward, but, unfortunately, there was a mixup at a maternity ward some years ago, and someone has misplaced the Antichrist child. Whoops.

This is a very Pratchetty book, which means that if you're a big TP fan, you'll probably like it. I'm not a BIG TP fan, though I've read, like, seven or eight of his other books. I wish I liked him more; I really do. I like his sense of humor, but every one of his other books suffers from pacing problems. The first hundred pages are always great, and then it's as if he looks at the audience and says, "well, now what?" Actually, it's kind of like any number of old Monty Python's Flying Circus sketches, where the humor isn't quite enough to sustain a full five- or six-minute sketch.

I dunno. I liked Small Gods the best of all his other books I've read, but I liked this one well enough. I'm not familiar enough with Neil Gaiman to be able to really detect his contributions to the story very often (though there are a few points in the story that don't seem Pratchetty enough; I suppose that's where Gaiman took over).

This isn't one of those books where you can really derive much useful "life lesson" kind of enlightenment; it's fluff, but it's entertaining and humorous fluff. And there's certainly room for that kind of thing now and then.