I often avoid reviewing a Book Club book before our discussion to save what I have to say until the conversation, or because I’m not sure what I want to say and am hoping the discussion will help clarify it for me. When I do review ahead of time I find myself leaving amorphous reviews without much substance, reviews that I look back on and think, but what did I really get out of that reading experience?
I’m hoping not to fall into either camp with Good Omens. I’ve read a bit of both Pratchett and Gaiman’s solo works and on the whole am a fan of both, so when the time came around to read this book I wasn’t worried about liking it, and my faith in my understanding of the writers’ styles and my affection for them wasn’t misplaced. I did enjoy this book. I enjoyed it even as I clocked the things about it that I didn’t like, that show just how far both these authors grew, and how our understanding about how to exist in the world without doing harm to others has grown.
I love a story of friendship, a narrative built around an adventure that isn’t just the hero’s journey (lord save me from pointless hero’s journey tales) and Good Omens delivers on that in spades. Its also a very telling satire on the human condition and how we interact with the larger forces of the universe, however we choose to define them. Its far from perfect, and I’m sure we’ll get into that in a few days during the #CannonBookClub discussion, but for right now I’m just going to luxuriate in the fact that the book exists at all as a testament to friendship, both on page and behind it.