Review: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

I promised a review of Neil Gaiman’s visit to Agnes Scott, but well, I’m lazy tonight and everyone beat me to the good reviews. Let’s settle for a review of Good Omens then, shall we?

It’s a story about the end of the world, as one might gather from reading the back cover. I’m a sucker for these tales, especially when they’re hilarious and include snappy dialogue and description from out of nowhere that made me crack up as soon as I realized what exactly I had just read. But as a writer who can be unintentionally funny, reading humorous fiction, especially fiction that makes writing and the creation of such hilarious lines seem so easy (even though I know writing is the exact opposite of easy, despite the rate at which I can write), gives me not discouragement but hope. I read the collaborative style of Pratchett and Gaiman and see that while the words flow magically, there is no prose that goes on for pages about the green grass on the hills. It’s approachable to anyone who wants to pick up the book and start reading, which is exactly what I want to do with my own work. Even though my own first drafts are terrible, maybe (just maybe) I can craft them into something just as magical.

The verdict: Would read again. I’ll have to, in fact–Neil signed my copy of this book, and I need to do it justice in order to drop it in the bathtub and bind it with tape properly.

Meeting Neil last night didn’t hurt either. More on that tomorrow, though.