Due to ineffability, God's plan for Adam and Eve that they get kicked out of Eden if they partake of the forbidden fruit that both Crawley, the serpent and Aziraphale the angel with the flaming sword who gave his sword to the couple because it was cold outside and they'd need it to fix meals with, both agree that it is a bit harsh of a punishment. And thus forms a friendship that lasts throughout time.
Now Agnes Nutter, a witch, and prophetess from the 1600s England wrote a book that was passed down in her family but wasn't much of a seller on the market as a book of prophecies go. She predicted such things as the stock market crash and that Betamaxes should not be bought. But figuring out what she predicted is hard enough to do unless you're descendent and have placed them on index cards with notes from previous generations. The current descendant is Anathema Device and when she is getting a ride from Crawley and Aziraphale one night she leaves the book in his fine Bently where Aziraphale picks it up in shock at seeing an actual copy of the famed book as he is a collector of books of prophecy.
Crawley and Aziraphale are on a mission: to stop Armageddon. The Anti-Christ has been born but with the ineptitude of the Satanic nuns at the hospital, the wrong two babies are switched out and Crawley and Aziraphale who have decided to try to influence the child's upbringing by having him grow up with equal parts good and evil put before him so that when the time comes he will not start Armageddon have been influencing the wrong child.
Eleven years later, the time for Armageddon is here and Adam Young, the correct Anti-Christ is sent the Hound of Hell, who becomes a sweet dog. He has three friends, Pepper, Wensleydale, and Brian that he gets into lots of trouble with. When he meets Anathema who lives in the same town because she knows that the end times will begin in Tadfield, England, she gives him back issues of some of her occult magazines about Atlantis and saving the whales, and saving the rainforest, and UFOs. As he tells his friends about these things, Atlantis erupts from the water and a UFO from the 1950s design keeps landing and giving the greeting "We Come In Peace", and trees begin to grow up from the ground everywhere.
Meanwhile, War, Famine, Death, and Pollution (Pestilence retired in 1945 after the invention of penicillin) are making their ways around the world toward England causing havoc wherever they go. Along the way, a messenger delivery man with a van goes about delivering their particular weapons and totems.
But there are those who do not want Crawley and Aziraphale to succeed in stopping Armageddon. They would be Beelzebub, a Fallen Angel and Prince of Hell, Hastur and Ligur, Fallen Angels and Dukes of Hell, and Metatron, the voice of God. They believe in the plan and that it is what is supposed to happen and then they can do some cool fighting between Heaven and Hell. Crawley and Aziraphale believe that Earth is a pretty awesome place that they are enjoying and it would be a shame to end it and that humans are better/worse than anything in Heaven or Hell. Also, neither friend wants to fight the other.
This is a thoroughly hilarious book that takes a look at the Christian Armageddon and turns it on its head. Crawley is such a cool guy that is always getting his friend Aziraphale into trouble when Aziraphale isn't getting himself into trouble on his own. There's just enough goodness in Crawley and just enough badness in Aziraphale that the two meet in the middle to create a true friendship. The characters in this book are unbelievable in their ability to make you see not just yourself in them but others you know in such a funny way that has you laughing all the way through the book. The footnotes are worth mentioning too as they provide not just helpful explanations but more chances to make you laugh. Have I mentioned that this book is funny? I can't give it enough stars, though, since I do have to rate it I give it five out of five stars.
Quotes
Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned
Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They’d been brought
up to it and weren’t, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren’t. They just get carried away by new ideas, like
dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets
and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and
their hearts and minds will follow.
-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens p 29)
It is said that the Devil has all the best tunes. This is
broadly true. But Heaven has the best choreographers.
-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens p 88)
“It’s a bit early in the morning to be calling on nuns,” said
Aziraphale doubtfully. “Nonsense. Nuns are up and about at all hours,” said
Crowley. “It’s probably Compline, unless that’s a slimming aid.”
-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens p 96)
But not like every Burger Lord across the world. German Burger
Lords, for example, sold lager instead of root beer, while English Burger Lords
managed to take any American fast food virtues (the speed with which your food
was delivered for example) and carefully remove them; your food arrived after
half an hour, at room temperature, and it was only because of the strip of warm
lettuce between them that you could distinguish the burger from the bun. The Burger Lord pathfinder salesman had been shot
twenty-five minutes after setting foot in France.
-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens p 157)
America was, to them, the place that good people went to
when they died.
-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens p 163)
Note for Young People and Americans: Two farthings = One
Ha’penny. Two ha’pennies= One Penny.
Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two
Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One
Sixpence =Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns= Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (Or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling
= One Guniea. The British resisted
decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too
complicated.
-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens p 198)
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which
said that if the machine 1) didn’t work, 2) didn’t do what the expensive
advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighborhood, 4) and in
fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this
was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility
of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be
allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what
had just been paid for as the purchaser’s own property would result in the attentions
of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches. Crowley had been extremely impressed with the
warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle
Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a
yellow memo form attached saying: “Learn guys.”
-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens p 247)
He was very proud of his collection. It had taken him
ages to put together. This was real Soul Music. James Brown wasn’t in it.
-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens p 249)
She felt she looked haunted and gaunt and romantic, and
she would have, if she had lost another thirty pounds. She was convinced that she was anorexic because
every time she looked in the mirror she did indeed see a fat person.
-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens p 285)
So computers are tools of the Devil? thought Newt. He had
no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody, and all he
knew for certain was that it definitely wasn’t him.
-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens p 323)
“I've never really liked the Yanks” “They’re really very
nice people, you know.” “Yes, but you can’t trust people who pick up the ball
all the time when they play football.”
