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Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch Kindle Edition
The classic collaboration from the internationally bestselling authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, soon to be an original series starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant.
?Season 2 of Good Omens coming soon!
“Good Omens . . . is something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had collaborated. Lots of literary inventiveness in the plotting and chunks of very good writing and characterization. It’s a wow. It would make one hell of a movie. Or a heavenly one. Take your pick.” —Washington Post
According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.
So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.
And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWilliam Morrow
- Publication dateJune 28, 2011
- File size5655 KB
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From the Publisher
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch | Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch | The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book | The Nice and Accurate Good Omens TV Companion | Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch | |
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“The Apocalypse has never been funnier.” — Clive Barker
“Hilariously naughty.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Wacky and irreverent.” — Booklist
“Reads like the Book of Revelation, rewritten by Monty Python.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Fiendishly funny.” — New Orleans Times-Picayune
“From beginning to end, GOOD OMENS is side-splittingly funny . . . a ripping good time.” — Rave Reviews
“If you’ve never read [GOOD OMENS], don’t miss it now. Grade: A.” — Rocky Mountain News
“It could be called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Armargeddon.” — Palm Beach Post
“[L]ittle asides, quirky observations, simple puns and parody eventually add up to snorts, chortles and outright laughs.” — San Diego Union-Tribune
“What’s so funny about Armageddon? More than you’d think . . . GOOD OMENS has arrived just in time.” — Detroit Free Press
“Full-bore contemporary lunacy. A steamroller of silliness that made me giggle out loud.” — San Diego Union-Tribune
“A direct descendant of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” — New York Times
“An utter delight—fresh, exciting, uproariously funny.” — Poul Anderson
“Outrageous . . . read it for a riotous good laugh!” — Orlando Sentinel
“I whooped . . . I laughed . . . I was in near hysterics.: — New York Review of Science Fiction
“A slapstick Apocalypse, a grinning grimoire, a comic Necronomicon, a hitchhiker’s guide to the netherworld.” — James Morrow, author of Only Begotten Daughter
“One Hell of a funny book.” — Gene Wolfe
“Hilarious!” — Locus
“Huge fun.” — Sunday Express (London)
“Irreverently funny and unexpectedly wise . . . Highly recommended.” — Library Journal
“Something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had collaborated.” — Washington Post
From the Inside Flap
From the Paperback edition.
From the Back Cover
According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.
So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.
And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .
About the Author
Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling and multi-award winning author and creator of many beloved books, graphic novels, short stories, film, television and theatre for all ages. He is the recipient of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and many Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. Neil has adapted many of his works to television series, including Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett) and The Sandman. He is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College. For a lot more about his work, please visit: https://www.neilgaiman.com/
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Good Omens
The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, WitchBy Neil GaimanHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright ©2006 Neil GaimanAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0060853980
Chapter One
Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it was created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unoffi cially, it came into being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old.
These dates are incorrect.
Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760 B.C. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508 B.C.
These suggestions are also incorrect.
Archbishop James Usher (1580?1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 B.C. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 B.C., at exactly 9:00 A.M., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.
This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour.
The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet.
This proves two things:
Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players,* to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infi nite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
Secondly, the Earth's a Libra.
The astrological prediction for Libra in the "Your Stars Today"
column of the Tadfi eld Advertiser, on the day this history begins, read as follows:
Libra. September 24?October 23.
You may be feeling run down and always in the same old daily round. Home and family matters are highlighted and are hanging fi re. Avoid unnecessary risks. A friend is important to you. Shelve major decisions until the way ahead seems clear. You may be vulnerable to a stomach upset today, so avoid salads. Help could come from an unexpected quarter.
This was perfectly correct on every count except for the bit about the salads.
It wasn't a dark and stormy night.
It should have been, but that's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is fi nished and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.
But don't let the fog (with rain later, temperatures dropping to around forty-fi ve degrees) give anyone a false sense of security. Just because it's a mild night doesn't mean that dark forces aren't abroad. They're abroad all the time. They're everywhere.
They always are. That's the whole point.
Two of them lurked in the ruined graveyard. 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. They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for a final burst of lurking around dawn.
Finally, after another twenty minutes, one of them said: "Bugger this for a lark. He should of been here hours ago."
The speaker's name was Hastur. He was a Duke of Hell.
Many Phenomena—wars, plagues, sudden audits—have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for Exhibit A.
Where they go wrong, of course, is in assuming that the wretched road is evil simply because of the incredible carnage and frustration it engenders every day.
In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds." The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around.
It was one of Crowley's better achievements. It had taken years to achieve, and had involved three computer hacks, two break-ins, one minor bribery and, on one wet night when all else had failed, two hours in a squelchy fi eld shifting the marker pegs a few but occultly incredibly signifi cant meters. When Crowley had watched the fi rst thirty-mile-long tailback he'd experienced the lovely warm feeling of a bad job well done.
It had earned him a commendation.
Crowley was currently doing 110 mph somewhere east of Slough. Nothing about him looked particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns, no wings. Admittedly he was listening to a Best of Queen tape, but no conclusions should be drawn from this because all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums. No particularly demonic thoughts were going through his head. In fact, he was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.
Crowley had dark hair and good cheekbones and he was wearing snakeskin shoes, or at least presumably he was wearing shoes, and he could do really weird things with his tongue. And, whenever he forgot himself, he had a tendency to hiss.
He also didn't blink much.
The car he was driving was a 1926 black Bentley, one owner from new, and that owner had been Crowley. He'd looked after it.
Continues...
Excerpted from Good Omensby Neil Gaiman Copyright ©2006 by Neil Gaiman. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B0054LJGWS
- Publisher : William Morrow; Reprint edition (June 28, 2011)
- Publication date : June 28, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 5655 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 390 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0441003257
- Best Sellers Rank: #13,389 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #36 in Read & Listen for $14.99 or Less
- #39 in Contemporary Fantasy Fiction
- #61 in Read & Listen for Less
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Neil Gaiman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, and The Graveyard Book. Among his numerous literary awards are the Newbery and Carnegie medals, and the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner awards. He is a Professor in the Arts at Bard College.
Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was fifteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe. Terry worked for many years as a journalist and press officer, writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including his first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. In 1987 he turned to writing full time, and has not looked back since. To date there are a total of 36 books in the Discworld series, of which four (so far) are written for children. The first of these children's books, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal. A non-Discworld book, Good Omens, his 1990 collaboration with Neil Gaiman, has been a longtime bestseller, and was reissued in hardcover by William Morrow in early 2006 (it is also available as a mass market paperback (Harper Torch, 2006) and trade paperback (Harper Paperbacks, 2006). Terry's latest book, Nation, a non-Discworld standalone YA novel was published in October of 2008 and was an instant New York Times and London Times bestseller. Regarded as one of the most significant contemporary English-language satirists, Pratchett has won numerous literary awards, was named an Officer of the British Empire “for services to literature” in 1998, and has received four honorary doctorates from the Universities of Warwick, Portsmouth, Bath, and Bristol. His acclaimed novels have sold more than 55 million copies (give or take a few million) and have been translated into 36 languages. Terry Pratchett lived in England with his family, and spent too much time at his word processor. Some of Terry's accolades include: The Carnegie Medal, Locus Awards, the Mythopoetic Award, ALA Notable Books for Children, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Book Sense 76 Pick, Prometheus Award and the British Fantasy Award.
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It is a cult classic and I am not going to waste a bunch of time trying to come up with superlatives not yet used. It is worth reading the reviews such as the ones I found on Amazon. The novel is not everyone’s cup of tea; there are many negative ones. Most of the negative ones I read were of Neil Gaiman and those reviewers complained about a difference in the Gaiman style as compared to his other works. I felt those reviewers were unfair. I can safely bet there are a bunch of Christian religious fundamentalists (not extremists) which would not even attempt to see the humor in the naming and depictions of various members of the holy (and unholy) establishment. Who would have the temerity to suggest that War, Death, and Famine could keep their original Four Horsemen names but Pestilence was going to have to accept an upgrade to Pollution due to the demands of technology?
Back to two complaints I have about the edition I read. (1) Who cares about publisher and publishers and reprint editions and the “when” of an edition? Me, when the novel becomes hard to read. Throughout this edition, there were symbols that looked like this * throughout the novel. I couldn’t initially find what they referred to. The story was moving along nicely at its usual speed of light and ignoring the symbols didn’t hinder its movement at all. Then I found all the referenced items at the end of the novel. And they were interesting. But at that point, there were no page references and I couldn’t easily go back to what they referred to. Grrrr! So, for a better reading experience, click on the tiny symbols. They will take you to the reference. Then click the back button on the Kindle App and it will take you back to the page you were on … maybe. I don’t know how it works when you are reading the novel on several devices at once and synchronization kicks in. That is what caused me problems.
(2) This book was written by two authors in sort of a back-and-forth style. If one couldn’t get past a certain point (make it funny) the other kicked in new ideas. Through lots and lots of conference calls, they came up with this. Of course, Gaiman’s style was different! I am sure both he and Terry Pratchett made compromises in their final submission. I found many of the negative reviewer comments irrelevant.
Now a bit about content. Here are some of the lines I found attention grabbing. Having read these, no way I could put the book down. After reading the subtitle I was hooked. “The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.” How could I walk away from that? It quickly became apparent that Agnes had written a book predicting the Apocalypse, the end of Days. And, looking at the table of contents (of this novel, not the one by Agnes) we can see that it is going to be very soon. It is a matter of days. Certain events and signs must happen first (re: the four Horsemen) but a lot of subordinate characters, angels and lesser angels, demons and lesser demons, Witchhunters, and innocent bystanders go in search for the missing ingredient, the Antichrist. The Antichrist, appropriately named Adam, has not exactly gotten sidetracked in his mission. He was never informed of the mission. He grew up as a “normal” boy. Although he always seemed to be the leader of any group, the one with the best ideas, and the ability to bend everyone else to his will, he did not act knowingly as the Antichrist. He is simply known by his nickname “The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness. (p. 27). At least that is what Crowley, Satan’s representative on Earth, calls his soon-to-be-master.
This is a hilarious, sarcastic, cynical, and absurd look at the fragility of human nature. For those who want to relate absurd happenings to literal happenings in present day reality, there is lots of material to allow a reader to do that.
But I couldn’t stop laughing and didn’t want to spoil it with reality. I will read more novels with the Gaiman name. And I will take care of them. I will not treat them in a way described at the beginning of this novel. “If we run across a shiny new copy, it’s usually because the owner’s previous five have been stolen by friends, struck by lightning or eaten by giant termites in Sumatra. You have been warned. Oh, and we understand there’s a copy in the Vatican library.” (p. 2).
Overall, I'd say "Good Omens" is a blast if you like your books quirky, unexpected, and a little bit absurd.
Then Crowley gets the word that the time has come for the arrival of the Anti-Christ. He can't believe it's all going to end, but like a good demon he does his duty. Unbeknownst to him, though the Satanic nuns at the hospital where he delivered the child had a minor mix-up and the Anti-Christ ends up going home with a working class English couple instead of the American diplomat he was supposed to. In this novel, prophecy move along regardless of the circumstances (probably foretold in the "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch") and neither side discovers the error until eleven years later when a hellhound is released and never appears at the appointed place. By that time things are in a major uproar because the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (who prefer to ride Harley's instead of horses), Death, Pestilence, Famine, and War have already started going about trying to destroy most of the world while most of the hosts Heaven and Hell are preparing for battle in the upcoming Armageddon.
Things don't look very well. Yet, there's an eleven-year-old boy in England who has visions of UFOs, a hollow Earth, and tunneling Tibetans that suddenly start happening. Things just aren't what they used to be. As the only two creatures who seem to have a clue what is going on, it's up to Crowley and Aziraphale to try to put things right before the world ends.
I thoroughly enjoyed GOOD OMENS. The book was full of classic Brittish wit coloured with good-old American humor and pop culture references. I have never read anything by Gaiman (though I have heard of his SANDMAN works) or Pratchett and picked up this novel after hearing that Terry Gilliam was wanting to turn the book into a movie. I've enjoyed many of Gilliam's other works and wanted to stay ahead of the game and read the book ahead of time (the movie is in limbo right now, though).
My only negative complaint is that the book has several characters, so at times it is a bit difficult to keep up with what is happening to whom and where. I know that there are also some who would be offend by the misuse of the Biblical elements used to form the foundation of the story. I usually tend to view things such as the Apocalypse, Armageddon, and the end of the world in a serious light myself. However, I knew before reading this book that these writers weren't going to that and I ended up enjoying the book immensely. It made me laugh many times.
Just watch out for those good omens. They rarely are that good.
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Reviewed in Spain on April 20, 2024