January

Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer, 2012

I've been a fan of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series for years; at its best, these books are light, terrific fun with really endearing characters and goofy, James Bond-meets-Brothers Grimm plots. The first few installments are definitely the best ones; the series has been getting progressively weaker for a long time now, so I was rather pleased to hear that Colfer was finally wrapping up the series with Guardian. And I was even happier when Guardian proved to be a smart, satisfying conclusion to a sometimes troubled saga.

The plot revolves around the apocalypse, Fowl-style. Naturally, the engineer of this cataclysm is Artemis's arch-enemy, Opal Koboi, who escapes from prison using a brilliantly diabolical and bizarre trick. Her next step is unleashing ancient fairy magic that will destroy the world, if Artemis, Butler, Holly, Foaly and Mulch can't stop her in time. It's a something of a boilerplate plot for the series, but Colfer makes it clear from the get-go that the stakes are higher than ever. The action is completely relentless, and it's the classic mixture of exciting and entirely absurd that fans have come to expect. I mean, any book that has the Abominable Snowman pushing a small plane down a runway with a dwarf on his back, being pursued by fairy warriors possessing forest animals has to be awesome, right?

Colfer is not a phenomenal writer by any means; he never has been. There are plenty of awkward sentences and plenty of cliches, but there's generally enough genuine wit to counterbalance it. Gotta love the dialogue, too, even if it's often more cheesy than snappy. And hey, Colfer doesn't go too far with his usual ecological tangents, either, which is certainly a mercy.

The important thing about a finale, of course, is wrapping up character arcs, and for most of Guardian I was afraid that Colfer would shortchange Artemis (I was also a bit afraid that Artemis wouldn't have an opportunity to out-think his final foe). For the series to be at all satisfying, Artemis's redemption arc has to come full circle. Thankfully, Colfer makes the last few chapters one last classic Fowl gambit, with an emotional twist. For someone who's followed Artemis's journey from villain to hero for years, the ending has real impact. Everybody else gets a chance to shine, too, particularly Foaly, who gets his own subplot for the first time. And yes, Artemis's final sacrifice really got to me (I may have cried just a tad). It was a near-perfect conclusion to the series, as was the final line, where Holly, telling Artemis's clone his own life story, finishes the series with its very first sentence.

 

Let It Bleed by Ian Rankin, 1996

Let It Bleed is, in my opinion, the best John Rebus novel since Tooth and Nail. It's the longest in the series so far, a dense, intricate tale with both shocking intimacy and stunning scope. This is probably the most complex plot Rankin has yet attempted, but it's also one of his crispest and most logical. More important than the plot, of course, is John Rebus, and he's in fine form here--which is to say that he's an utter mess of a human being, and yet impossible not to love. Let It Bleed is the work of an author at the top of his game, and it's glorious.

As is usual with Rebus novels, the plot is impossible to succinctly describe, since it's tangled and twisted and looped back on itself. Suffice it to say that the novel opens with a stunning car chase that ends in tragedy and sparks an unofficial investigation that leads Rebus to the highest level of the Scottish government. As usual, his search for the truth could easily cost him his job, if not his life. The strands of plot, which are many, all tie together neatly here, something which caused Rankin trouble in previous books. The story may be devilishly complex, but it all comes together well (a couple of slightly over-stretching moments aside).

A blurb on the back of my copy compares Rankin to Charles Dickens, and it's an astonishingly insightful and apt comparison. Rankin, like Dickens, tells vast narratives that encompass people from every level of the socioeconomic strata. He keenly observes not only what makes them different, but what makes them similar. Rebus--and Rankin--is above all an observer of human nature, and he's a brilliant way to tell a story about people from all different backgrounds through just one narrator. Rebus is contemptuous of everybody; he's an equal-opportunity snarker.

His own life has perhaps never been worse. Not only has he broken up with Patience, but his estranged daughter Sammy is now living with her, complicating two already terrible relationships. His arch-enemy Flower is trying to get him off the force, and may know more than he's letting on. On top of everything, Rebus's alcoholism is getting steadily worse. Rankin's portrayal of Rebus's quiet desperation and whiskey-soaked melancholy is genuinely haunting. Though he fights against it, ennui and loneliness are always close to consuming him. The only thing that helps is his work, and yet even that only serves to drive him further into depression. Anybody who's read my reviews of Rankin's previous novels will know that I have been crazy about John Rebus since day one, and he remains one of my favorite literary detectives ever. He's an incredible character, period.

In a very real way, Let It Bleed's main dramatic action is not Rebus hunting down a murderer or a terrorist, but Rebus going head-to-head with a far more powerful group of opponents. He's never been more isolated or more out-classed, but instead of giving up, he digs in and puts up a fight. Choosing the side of the angels is hard, however, when you seem to be surrounded entirely by demons. Ultimately, Rebus doesn't defeat all that's wrong with his screwed-up world (not even close), but he does the best he can and has to hope that that's enough.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, 1999

I sort of wanted to resist The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Its reputation as a "banned book," its supposed wisdom and beauty, its popularity among teen readers, all of it kind of turned me off to it a bit. I imagined the book being gimmicky and cliched, the kind of YA novel that gets acclaim without being very good.

And then the book made me sob my eyes out. So, yeah. I misjudged it from the outset.

Perks does a lot of difficult things very, very well. It's a virtual minefield from start to finish, and Chbosky navigates it with incredible confidence. A YA novel narrated by a quirky, innocent protagonist (in epistolary format, no less)? A main character whose sunny outlook on life is an inspiration to others? A narrative about the first year of high school, complete with first dates, lunchroom fights and all-important dances? And let's not forget that the novel deals with a laundry list of hot-button social issues, like abortion, homophobia, date rape, mental illness and sexual abuse. These are the ingredients for disaster, or at least generic blandness, when it comes to a novel like this.

Perks is not a disaster. It's actually kind of a masterpiece. It gets to the heart of adolescence better than just about any book that I can think of off the top of my head. It's straightforward without being pedantic, simple without being simplistic. Its main character, Charlie, is an endlessly kind and sensitive boy and he should be completely irritating. But instead, he's one of the most beautifully realized characters I've read about in a YA novel. Even a last-minute revelation about his past is a genuine gut-kick rather than a hokey device. Writing a character that good had to have been incredibly difficult, but it completely works.

Charlie's commentary on the more cynical world around him is both incredibly insightful and endearingly naive. One of Chbosky's most effective concepts is peopling Charlie's world with complicated, multi-faceted characters that he doesn't fully understand. The reader only gets to truly understand the supporting characters gradually; Charlie is not an especially reliable narrator, even with his moments of startling insight.

Complaints? I really don't have any. It takes a while to settle into the novel, but that's more because of the idiosyncratic nature of the narration than any fault in execution. There were a few moments that reminded me of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief: beautiful and well-observed, but a tiny bit manipulative, as though the author knows just how thoroughly he's grabbed hold of your emotions, and takes the opportunity to twist the knife a bit. Still, it's pretty hard to accuse an author of manipulating your emotions too successfully.

In a lot of ways, Perks is not a complex novel. The story is not the point; the book has little plot, and even the central framing device of Charlie's letters goes entirely unexplained. What it is is an enchanting character study, and a look at the messed-up ways in which people relate to each other. Charlie makes observations about families, friend, love and growing up that are understated and simple, but sometimes gut-wrenchingly true. How many first kisses have I read about in novels? A lot. But how many are as sweet and gorgeous and memorable as Charlie's first kiss with Sam? Very few.

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman, 1989

My second foray into the world of comic books was trickier but ultimately more rewarding than my first. The Sandman is one of the few comic book sagas to have a distinct beginning, middle and end. Unlike most others, it's actually possible to read it all the way through. The first eight issues, collected in Preludes and Nocturnes, are sometimes a little awkward, as you can see Gaiman getting his footing. By the end of the collection, however, the series starts to take form, and I realized that I was in for quite a journey.

Preludes and Nocturnes is a charmingly mixed-up narrative, hopping around genres, tones and locales with merry abandon, while keeping the main thread front and center. Some issues read like straight-up horror, others like elegant fantasy, others like DC superhero tales. The Sandman, Morpheus, is not a character nailed down to anything in particular; as is fitting for the Lord of Dreams, he is fluid and complex, and can pretty much end up anywhere, a storytelling device that's both handy and downright inspired.

The collection follows Morpheus as he escapes from a long imprisonment and returns to his realm to find that things have fallen apart in his absence. In classic form, he must go on a quest to reclaim three of his lost treasures, items that will give him back his power. This relatively simple frame enables Morpheus to travel to Hell, ally himself with a paranormal detective and go up against an escaped supervillain planning to take over the world.

For my money, the more down-to-earth material is where Gaiman really shines. Cosmic metaphysics are all well and good, but I prefer the genuine characterization to the nutty comic-book action (call me crazy, but I prefer stories where people actually interact to stories where every other pages has BOOM or KRSHEESH). Luckily for me, there's plenty of Gaiman's trademarks: dry wit, smooth narration, brilliantly off-the-wall imagery. The series' main character, Morpheus, is obviously a tricky one to write: he's a literal force of nature, as well as a person in his own right. Overall, I found him interesting--detached, but not unkind, ballsy, but ultimately insecure--and I look forward to more development in the future. The last issue, and the best, introduces his sister, Death, who's easily the most interesting and poignant character in the book. Their interaction is absolutely fascinating; I can't wait to see more of the Endless (they must have some interesting Christmas dinners).

The standalone elements are more hit-or-miss for me. Dream's trip to Hell left me pretty cold, and the Doctor Destiny storyline (while creating a nice framework for the book) ends rather anticlimactically, despite some great moments along the way. The "24 Hours" vignette is a particularly chilling interlude, like a Stephen King novel compressed into just a few gruesome pages. Doctor Destiny definitely has his moments as a villain, but like I said, the end of the storyline basically amounts to "Okay, everything's fine again due to comic-book physics." The final issue, however, is what has me really excited to get my hands on the next collection: it's a spare, surprisingly sweet tale about moving on, in various ways. It's very funny in places, and moving, and it's drawn with an impeccable eye for mood and characterization. Hopefully, as the series moves on, it will continue to mature in new and astonishing ways. With Gaiman at the helm, it seems impossible that it wouldn't.

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman, 1998

Benjamin Lassiter was coming to the unavoidable conclusion that the woman who had written A Walking Tour of the British Coastline, the book he was carrying in his backpack, had never been on a walking tour of any kind, and would probably not recognize the British coastline if it were to dance through her bedroom at the head of a marching band, singing "I'm the British Coastline" in a loud and cheerful voice while accompanying itself on the kazoo.

He had been following her advice for five days now and had little to show for it except blisters and a backache. All British seaside resorts contain a number of bed-and-breakfast establishments, who will be only too delighted to put you up in the "off-season" was one such piece of advice. Ben had crossed it out and written in the margin beside it: All British seaside resorts contain a number of bed-and-breakfast establishments, the owners of which take off to Spain or Provence or somewhere on the last day of September, locking the doors behind them as they go.

He had added a number of other marginal notes, too. Such as Do not repeat do not order fried eggs again in any roadside cafe and What is it with the fish-and-chips thing? and No they are not. That last was written beside a paragraph which claimed that, if there was one thing that the inhabitants of scenic villages on the British coastline were pleased to see, it was a young American tourist on a walking tour. ---- ("Shoggoth's Old Peculiar," pages 147-148)

As a general rule, I'm not a huge reader of short stories. My ideal reading experience is a nice hefty novel, not a series of insubstantial tales that oftentimes end up feeling like a series of unsatisfying nibbles. That said, there are a handful of authors whose short stories I really enjoy, Stephen King probably being foremost among them. King's tendency to ramble and take forever to get to the point is nicely curtailed by the short story format, and you could make an excellent argument that his short story collections represent his best work.

Neil Gaiman is a very different writer (and a better writer; sorry, Stephen), but his work is often similar to King's. Smoke and Mirrors resembles King's story collections in a lot of ways: it's a jumbled, quirky collection of stories, poems and experimental odd bits, most of them in some way related to fantasy or horror, with explanatory notes on each piece. Like all story collections, Smoke is sort of a mixed bag, the diversity of its offerings making it rather inconsistent, but it contains some truly fantastic stories and certainly more good than bad.

The stories run the gamut from comic to tragic, from amusing to terrifying. Gaiman's poetry is sometimes hair-raisingly haunting and sometimes a little thin. Every single piece, even the weaker ones, are imbued with Gaiman's particular brand of the bizarre and the gleefully wicked black comedy that is his trademark. Some of these stories are absolute gems and even the ones that aren't as good are at least entertaining.

The award-winning "Snow, Glass, Apples" is arguably the most well-known story in the collection, and it's definitely one of the finest. A razor-sharp retelling of the tale of Snow White, it's a great example of Gaiman's ability to find a unique way to tell old stories, as well as his tendency to find spine-tingling horror in the oddest places (seriously, if you don't shiver at least once while you read this story, there's something wrong). One of my other favorites, "Chivalry," is a complete contrast, a light and funny story that's actually a sneakily sad tale of loneliness. Whether it's emotional impact or a gruesome reveal, Gaiman is very good at narrative sleight-of-hand: keeping us focused on one idea or concept before pulling another one out of thin air.

Overall, Gaiman's prose is better than his poetry, although he is a pretty accomplished poet, too. A few of the poems, such as the haunting "The White Road" or the bizarre Beowulf-meets-Baywatch mashup "Baywolf" are highly memorable; whereas I could take or leave "Vampire Sestina" or "The Sea Change." In general, Gaiman is better at a more protracted narrative than a fleeting impression (this definitely holds true for his prose as well). His shorter pieces tend to be less interesting, and some of them feel a little half-baked.


Gaiman is unapologetic about the way that other authors and literary works have influenced him. "The Daughter of Owls" is a straight pastiche of John Aubrey's distinctive voice and "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock" was originally published in an anthology of stories celebrating legendary fantasy author Michael Moorcock. Several stories bear the mark of Gaiman's love for H.P. Lovecraft. The best of them is "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar," a sly little satire with some really excellent jokes. "Only the End of the World Again" has some arresting imagery, but an esoteric and impossible to follow plot. "Mouse," which according to Gaiman is his attempt at a Raymond Carver story, is another of the weaker tales in the collection, despite an intriguing central metaphor.

The least successful stories in the anthology are probably the underwritten sci-fi fable "Changes," "Foreign Parts," an icky and somewhat puzzling story of an unusual disease, "Tastings," the least erotic piece of erotica imaginable and, perhaps most of all, "When We Went to See the End of the World by Dawnie Morningside, age 11¼," an utterly cloying and poorly done story of the Apocalypse. The first of these three all have to do with sex in some form, which is an indication that it's not Gaiman's strongest subject. The last story is definitely the worst in the entire book; I can't help but wonder if its inclusion is a practical joke of some kind.

But the good far outweighs the bad. "We Can Get Them For You Wholesale" is a diabolically brilliant little piece of black comedy. The long-form poem "Cold Colors" is an eye-popping journey through a world where Hieronymus Bosch meets the iPad. "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories," an unusually long and non-fantasy story of a writer attempting to sell his novel to Hollywood, goes from a bitterly funny diatribe to a moving mediation on fame. When Gaiman is at the top of his form, he can knock a story or poem completely out of the park.

Perhaps my very favorite story in Smoke and Mirrors is "Murder Mysteries," a sprawling tale that goes from modern-day Los Angeles to the origin of the universe, when an angel committed the very first murder. Parts of the story are astonishingly brilliant, even if the frame story never quite comes together. Very few writers could come up with a concept as mind-bogglingly original and still fewer could execute the story with the grace, wit and thoughtfulness that Gaiman does. He is truly one of the most arresting writers working today, and probably one of the finest fantasy authors of all time. Smoke and Mirrors is not without its flaws and weak spots, but the overall impression is that of a master carefully crafting miniature versions of his longer works that sometimes pack just as much (or more) of a punch.

NEXT UP: Lee Child's Tripwire, because my Jack Reacher addiction is still ongoing.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

American Gods by Neil Gaiman, 2001

"She's the goddess within us all," said the girl with the eyebrow ring, color rising to her cheek. "She doesn't need a name."

"Ah," said Wednesday with a wide monkey grin, "so do you have mighty bacchanals in her honor? Do you drink blood wine under the full moon while scarlet candles burn in silver candleholders? Do you step naked into the seafoam, chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves lick at your legs, lapping your thighs like the tongues of a thousand leopards?"

"You're making fun of me," she said. "We don't do any of the stuff you were saying." She took a deep breath. Shadow suspected she was counting to ten. "Any more coffees here? Another mochaccino for you, ma'am?" Her smile was a lot like the one she had greeted them with when they had entered.

They shook their heads, and the waitress turned to greet another customer.

"There," said Wednesday, "is one who 'does not have the faith and will not have the fun,' Chesterston. Pagan indeed. So. Shall we go out into the street, Easter my dear, and repeat the exercise. Find out how many passerby know that their Easter festival takes its name from Eostre of the Dawn? Let's see--I have it. We shall ask a hundred people. For every one that knows the truth, you may cut off one of my fingers, and when I run out of them, toes; for every twenty who don't know, you spend a night making love with me. And the odds are certainly in your favor here--this is San Francisco, after all. There are heathens and pagans and Wiccans aplenty on these precipitous streets."

Her green eyes looked at Wednesday. They were, Shadow decided, the exact same color as a leaf in spring with the sun shining through it. She said nothing.

"We could try it," continued Wednesday. "But I would end up with ten fingers, ten toes, and five nights in your bed. So don't tell me they worship you and keep your festival day. They mouth your name, but it has no meaning to them. Nothing at all."--- (pages 311-312)

American Gods is a glorious, overstuffed banquet of riches for the fantasy reader, the kind of book that Stephen King used to write, but with more quirk, more humor and smoother writing. Gods is enormous fun, bursting with inventiveness and innovation, constantly moving between light and dark. Neil Gaiman, always good in my experience, has never been better.

When a mysterious man named Shadow is released from prison, he finds out that his beloved wife Laura has been killed in a car accident. On the plane home, he encounters a strange man calling himself Wednesday, who offers him a bizarre job.

Wednesday is an "old god," one of many living in America, brought from their native lands by immigrants over the course of history. Some have acclimated to their new surroundings (such as the Egyptian gods using their embalming skills as funeral directors) and some have not (such as Mad Sweeney, the drunk seven-foot leprechaun). Now, the new gods of technology, finance and media are rising, and Wednesday is spearheading a war between the two sides, a war that Shadow finds himself trapped in the middle of.

Gaiman's basic premise (the forgotten gods that live among us) is a simple stroke of genius. It's a device that runs the whole novel; it creates hilarity, intrigue and a strange poignancy as Gaiman investigates the weird and wild creatures that live among humans, ignored and unloved. It's a deliciously twisted dynamic, one where we can actually feel sorry for a god who no longer gets regular blood sacrifice. Overall, Gaiman is less interested in the "new gods," who are mostly generic, man-in-black baddies. It would have been nice if he had fleshed them out a bit more, but hey, the book is already six hundred pages long.

It says something about the power of Gaiman's vision that the creepy, quirky warring gods never overpower the story of Shadow, and his equally strange journey. Gaiman paints his main character with almost exquisite lightness, building him up slowly. His eventual descent into a patchwork underworld is a strangely moving sequence, and his relationship with his wife, Laura (who, in the tradition of The Princess Bride, is only mostly dead), is like the rest of the book, a bunch of contradictory things all rolled into one. It still works like gangbusters, though.

The novel's structure is endearingly odd. It's largely episodic, with a big subplot running through the last half or so. Everything and everyone that's shown up so far collides for the epic finale, in classic Dickensian tradition. Gaiman is way too genre-savvy to use a simple quest pattern and I love the fact that he would write a novel as thoroughly modern as this one in the style of nineteenth-century fiction.

His inclusion of frequent flashbacks (some that go waaaay back) is another major risk, since they could easily have made the book feel even more stuffed with content than it already did. Thankfully, most of the flashbacks are entertaining in their own right, and they serve to further elaborate the novel's sprawling mythology. American Gods is a book to savor, anyway, not a quick read.

I think it was the novel's final hundred pages that really clinched the entire book for me. There's a certain grace to the way Gaiman slowly, deftly brings together all of the book's separate strands in a surprisingly emotional, resonant way. There's something gorgeous about the way that Shadow, always the detached observer, comes into his own and becomes a crucial player in the cosmic game. And that final, devastatingly well-done plot twist is sheer storytelling excellence. Very few authors could have done something like that and gotten away with it. I might have preferred a more epic bloodbath (it's the Lord of the Rings fan in me), but it's a minor issue.

It takes a talented author to pull off a book as complex as this one while finding a balance between humor and pathos, between the epic and the personal. Neil Gaiman is more than up to the challenge. He's a real original, a writer unlike any other. His mixture of wiry, textured prose and sharp, funny dialogue is perfect. There's a certain undefinable something that sets his style apart.

He's written a wonderful book, too, strange and thrilling, equal parts funny and sad. American Gods is one of those rich reading experiences that readers everywhere crave. A twisted, delicious masterpiece of the macabre and bizarre, of old magic, which, as Gaiman shows us, so often lives not in outer space or Middle-earth, but right next door.

NEXT UP: The Black Book by Ian Rankin.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, 1990

Between them, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett account for a huge chunk of all significant fantasy fiction in the past twenty years or so. I've actually only read one book from each author (Gaiman: Stardust, Pratchett: The Color of Magic), but I enjoyed them both. Pratchett's wacky wordplay and Gaiman's mordantly dark humor don't seem like they would mesh well; nevertheless, they collaborated on a comic fantasy novel, Good Omens, that's gained a reputation as the next Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Books written by two authors tend to be a tad messy and Good Omens is no exception, but with two authors as accomplished as Gaiman and Pratchett, it turns out to be a damn funny mess.

The novel concerns the rise of the Antichrist and the coming of Armageddon, classic horror-novel cliches. Since it's Gaiman and Pratchett at the wheel, horror turns into comedy, as Crowley, a demon who did not fall so much as Saunter Vaguely Downwards, and Aziraphale, a book-loving angel, team up to find the Antichrist before he can bring around the end of the world. It's a wacky universe where the Four Horsemen have motorcycles, Famine is a crash-diet guru and Pestilence has been replaced by Pollution ever since the discovery of penicillin.

Since it's a comic novel, the most important thing is whether it's funny. And it is. Extremely funny. A lot of the humor is incredibly witty, a lot of it is just completely bizarre and some of it is simple bonk-on-the-head physical comedy. At least 70% of the jokes hit home, and there are a moments of comic invention almost as inspired as Douglas Adams' infamous Marvin the Paranoid Android. In this segment, amateur witchhunter Newt is approached by aliens who have just landed beside his car:

The other two ignored its frantic beeping and walked over to the car quite slowly, in the worldwide approved manner of policemen already compiling the charge sheet in their heads. The tallest one, a yellow toad dressed in kitchen foil, rapped on Newt's window. He wound it down. The thing was wearing the kind of mirror-finished sunglasses that Newt always thought of as Cool Hand Luke shades.

"Morning, sir or madam or neuter," the thing said. "This your planet, is it?"

The other alien, which was stubby and green, had wandered off into the woods by the side of the road. Out of the corner of his eye Newt saw it kick a tree, and then run a leaf through some complicated gadget on its belt. It didn't look very pleased.

"Well, yes, I suppose so," he said.

The toad stared thoughtfully at the skyline.

"Had it long, have we, sir?" it said.

"Er. Not personally. I mean, as a species, about half a million years. I think."

The alien exchanged glances with its colleague. "Been letting the old acid rain build up, haven't we, sir?" it said. "Been letting ourselves go a bit with the old hydrocarbons, perhaps?"

"I'm sorry."

"Could you tell me your planet's albedo, sir?" said the toad, still staring levelly at the horizon as though it was doing something interesting.

"Er. No."

"Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you, sir, that your polar ice caps are below regulation size for a planet of this category, sir."---(pages 183-184)

There's an unquestionable unevenness to the novel. The individual segments and jokes are mostly solid, but they don't sync up. It's often easy to identify who was writing what section; the two authors rarely seem to meld together in a streamlined way. There's a choppiness that just never translates to a smooth read.

The novel's scope also contributes to its odd sense of disconnectedness. There are several separate subplots going at once, and they're not all equal. The dynamic between Crowley and Aziraphale is easily the funniest in the book; frankly, the novel might have been better if it focused more on them.

The subplot involving the Four Horsemen is also hilarious and marvelously creative. Anyone who doesn't find the scene with the copycat bikers marvelously funny needs a checkup. Shadwell, a borderline-insane witchfinder who runs a one-man army, is also a creative hoot. It's stuff like this that happens when you get geniuses like Pratchett and Gaiman together.

It's the sections involving Adam, the eleven-year old Antichrist, and his gang of neighborhood kids that really weighs the novel down. These segments are just awkward--they don't fit with the rest of the novel, tonally, and are highly grating to boot. The kids' exaggerated speech and overly "cute" mannerisms make for the novel's only groan-worthy scenes.

Okay, the ending is a bit of a groaner, too, since Pratchett and Gaiman seem unsure whether to go dramatic or comedic, so they seem to compromise on an uncomfortable mixture. It's sort of an off note for the book to end on, even though I did like Crowley and Aziraphale casting their lot together.

Good Omens is a mess, no doubt, but it's the kind of mess that's acceptable because its high point are so high. It's a book that was probably a blast for the authors to write and some of their obvious enthusiasm seeps through. GO is a lot of fun and even though it could have been cleaner, it's still worth it, if only for the Four new Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty to Animals, Really Cool People and Things Not Working Properly, Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping.

NEXT UP: Gritty crime, with George Pelecanos's The Turnaround.