BOOK: Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

Title: Good Omens
Author: Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: The Random House (1990)
Pages: Paperback, 402
Language: English
Rating: 6/10
Summary: According to the Prophecies of Agnes Nutter the "End Of Times" is nigh. The angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley have become accustomed to their comfortable situations in the human world and join together to try and stop The Son Of Satan from reaching his full potential. Will they be able to prevent the four horsemen of the Apocalypse from reaching their goal?

Spoilerfree review
The beginning of this book made me grin thanks to its tongue-in-cheek depiction of the events in the Garden Of Eden, but only ten pages in it managed to rub me the wrong way and I never recovered to fully enjoy the rest of the story. (I got very grumpy when I read the line: "He should of been here hours ago."). Which is too bad, because the book is a potentially awesome parody of religion and its doom-scenarios, including loop holes in all the dogmas.
I'm not so petty to base my low opinion about this book solely on the use of hair-raisingly bad grammar, I understand it was only used in dialogue to represent a big part of the english-speaking community. But it was a symptom of the biggest bug I had with this book which is the over-awareness of the basic joke. The authors get carried away with the overload of options to poke fun at and there are so many nudge-nudge-wink-wink moments it's exhausting. You can almost hear them giggling in between the lines.
I loved the encounters between Aziraphale and Crowley and I would have loved the book if it had been only about their relationship. Sadly in the end there was simply too much going on and the story turns into a big slapstick chase. I like my humour a little less in-my-face.