Subtitled “The nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter, witch.” Good Omens is about the end times. Only in this version things don’t go entirely as planned. It’s really hard to say too much more about it than that without spewing spoilers in all directions. But the central screwup is that the antichrist and a regular human baby get switched in the confusion of their birthing.
From that beginning things proceed in a manner consistent with the tendencies of its two authors in a very silly mood. Indeed, the book seems to have taken Steven Brust’s “cool theory” (whenever you’re stuck for what happens next in a book you are writing you should ask yourself “what is the coolest thing that could happen next?”) and interpreted it with a very British slant toward the absurd. Not to say that the book is all goofiness. It is the end of the world in the offing and some of that takes forms very nasty indeed.
What kept me turning the pages was the way all the characters reacted to the lunacy around and among them just as real people would. A little agog, but trying to make sense of it all and trying to do the right thing in the face of it.