Book #61: "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman

I feel like I should have liked it more. I hate when that happens. I come in with outrageously high expectations, thanks to people whose opinion on most things is pretty valuable to me (except when it comes to TV shows), and I'm all excited and then...eh. It was just good. I was expecting to be moved. Shaken. Stirred. To be laughing uproariously.

I barely chuckled a couple of times. I would have been happy with it just being great instead of fantastic, but to be honest I just found it good. But ultimately forgettable.

I've been trying to process my feelings towards it almost from when I started reading it. I liked it, but it wasn't taking me in. There were some cute jokes, but it seemed like it was trying too hard to channel Douglas Adams. And then for the longest, damnedest time it just didn't goanywhere. There were times when it seemed like it would, but then the little vignette with some plot in it would get broken up and taken over by another clever little vignette talking about some clever little character who thinks some things and is never heard from again. It's very choppy, like a movie full of quick little cuts that never let you get a grasp on anything for very long. It's fitting to the manic tone of the book, I suppose, and I can see why it was done, I just didn't like it at all. It was frustrating, and pretty quickly I began to get annoyed at having a good bit that was just getting good get interrupted as we move to yet another unimportant character doing something "funny". It just got exhausting and annoying, and sometimes it just kept me from enjoying what is a fun little story.

It really is a great idea. Eleven years before the Apocalypse happens, the antichrist (in baby form) is delivered to earth by a demon. Unfortunately, he is placed with the wrong family. Of course no one realizes this until, eleven years later, an angel and a demon get together a week before the apocalypse and try to put a stop to it by getting rid of the Antichrist (who is supposed to start the whole thing out). Among the many, many supporting characters are the four horsemen (or...bikers) of the Apocalypse, the descendant of a witch who predicted the whole thing, some witchunters, a few more demons, the metatron, a psychic, the antichrist's gang of buddies and a Dog. The angel, the demon and the dog are pretty funny. The others are really kind of...dispensable. And useless. Even the antichrist is never really there.

So, really, I was just disappointed. It started out with a couple of lame jokes, but I just thought "this can only get better, right?" but then...it didn't really. There were parts that I'm sure are supposed to be really hilarious, but I just kind of read over them and chuckled. It just never really clicked with me. It starts and stops and just wasn't all that compeling. And to be completely honest, the one thought that kept running through my head as I read the jokes and situations was "Meh. Douglas Adams did it better."

I really did want to like it more than I did. I didn't hate it, but I didn't get that happy feeling in my stomach that I get when I really love a book. Ah well.