Good Omens (Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett)

Exchanged babies, American diplomat, Antichrist. Ring a bell? If you say The Omen, you're almost right. Only that it's a different kind of Omen, not THE Omen, but Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens.

The idea is actually very simple, just like any ideas that make good books usually are. What if the satanic worshipper got it all wrong? What if, instead of exchanging the American diplomat's child with her master's son, she switched an accountant's (whose foster parents--the American attaché and his wife--were successfully persuaded to name him Warlock) with her master's (later called Adam)? This poses another question: would he be just as "evil" as he supposed to be, since he's undetected and thus, wouldn't have a satanic worshipper guided him to the dark side and all? To put it differently, which would be the dominant side determining his actions, genes or environment? (In The Omen, the answer was the former; Damien had already had devilish tendency, it seemed, even without having that nanny sent to him.)

Fortunately, unlike many stories whose only good point is their main idea (like that Chick-Lits that are all about getting men and living happily ever after), Good Omens has unpredictable plot and solid characterizations. Its characters are the kinds whom you'd know how they would act in a certain condition, since each and every characters' has such distinguishable nature. Like Aziraphale the metrosexual angel ("...gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide."), or Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell ("'Awa' wi' ye, harlot,'...") who's a grumbler but really a softy at heart and happens to be my favorite character ;p.

Of course, it's not Neil Gaiman's unless it's full of metaphors, puns, and plain funniness. It's not always easy to understand them because (a) I'm not British; (b) English isn't my first language. And so the references he made didn't always make sense to me, considering I wasn't familiar with what he was referring to. But most of the times, I still found them funny, such as "Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded 'Born to Lurk,' these two would have been on the album cover." or the "Four Bikers of the Apocalypse" instead of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" because they rode motorbikes and not horses or "Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole."

It's safe to say that Good Omens has been very entertaining, which is why I now list them among my favorite books (I like it better than other Gaiman's works that I've read, Anansi Boys and Neverwhere). But if you want something more than "entertaining", don't worry, it has it. Good Omens is not just about the Apocalypse and the Antichrist being brought up in a nice, lovely countryside. It's also about humans who most of the times are neither being good or evil, but simply being humans. And if we want our problems sorted out, we'd better sort ourselves up rather than hoping for Divine intervention, just like Adam said, "...if you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive."