Rating: 3/5
Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t read the book, this review will contain spoilers so it’s up to you if you continue…
There's always huge debate about watching a show/film prior to reading the book but you know...sometimes it's got to be done.
And in the case of Good Omens...well, I have to say I think I did things the right way around.
Controversial opinion here, but I don't think the book is that great. I've never read anything by Pratchett or Gaiman, but they're massive authors - I'm going to assume they're good at writing.
Good Omens didn't wow me though.
The story is fun, and the writing is definitely unique to anything I've read before, but that doesn't mean it made for a good book. It felt rushed, to tell the truth. And maybe it's because I watched the Amazon adaption first but it felt like it was written for TV. The book just didn't do the story justice. It flew through scenes. Granted, the TV adaption proved that some of the scenes didn't need massive amounts of time to be spent on them, but a book usually contains more information that its adaption does.
In the case of Good Omens, I felt frequently that the TV show added something more than the book had to offer. Part of that is the updated inclusivity and language which came with a more modern adaption, but even ignoring that, there was emotion which didn't appear in the book. In fact, the book was very unemotional.
For a story which centres on the end of the world, I never felt connection between characters. There was little to no loss, the stakes never felt all that high. There wasn't a climax so much as a fizzling out of the problems.
Without any real explanation, the Four Horsemen - who have been built up through the book as the embodiment of evil - are defeated. They are so well built up, archaic concepts placed in modern settings, not just surviving but thriving on the way we live today. And yet, I don't know how they were defeated. I kind of got that Pollution was defeated by a clean Earth and the idea of it was good but something was lost in the execution. Why build the Horsemen up to be such threats if they could be defeated so easily. In fact, all of Armageddon was defeated by Adam's thoughts. When your solution is that your character can do anything, can literally talk Death out of the end of the world...what's the point?
The saving grace (pun intended) of this book is Aziraphale and Crowley. Despite being sold as the main characters of the story, I found that no one really was. Their story was interesting, but not well-fleshed out and, again, it was the show that made me feel for them.
Brought to life by Michael Sheen and David Tennant, the relationship between the two felt so much more alive in the show; they weren't flat on the page, but they weren't exactly thrilling either. Everything in the book just kind of...happened. I felt no emotional depth to it, which was disappointing. Even when Crowley thought Aziraphale had died, it never felt like a loss. No one in the book paused and felt grief or desperation. The whole thing just...keeps going. In fact, the show (and I know I should take them as separate things but it's hard to do when they felt so different) gave so much more depth to Aziraphale and Crowley, to the whole Heaven and Hell divide, than the book did.
For me, the show filled in the gaps the book left. It fleshes characters out, gives them more personality, as well as taking the time to show the relationships that are present, rather than simply give them to us.
A lot of this review has been negative, however I'm giving Good Omens a 3 star rating because I think it can be a fun read. When not comparing the productions, the book is certainly original and witty, the plot strong and the characters interesting. The style of writing is bright and clever, but there are some real weaknesses in the character development. I did enjoy it whilst reading it, but the ending lets it down by using Adam as something of a deus ex machina (i.e. a magic solution to all problems) which was frustrating and essentially made Crowley and Aziraphale redundant by the end of the story.
Fun? Yes.
Worth reading? Maybe.
Worth watching? Yes. (If for nothing other than Tenant's incredible performance).