Richard Derus's Reviews > Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

2019 UPDATE The miniseries on Amazon Prime gets 4.5 out of five, and a strong encouragement to go watch it. I mean, what is all this kerfuffle about the ending?! Episode 6 ended perfectly, with the loveliest touch of smarm and some real guffaws...wise choices indeed. The series misses on one count, we could do with more of the Them, but really now! Child labor laws and all that. Episode 3's epic cold open is, by itself, worth subscribing to Prime for. Episode 4's delight is Gabriel's red red robin bob-bob-bobbin' along...that was lovely.

All in all a delicious Queen of Puddings worthy of Mary Berry herself.


Book Rating: the least annoyed three stars I can muster out of five

The Publisher Says: According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .

My Review: The Son of Satan is coming, and that's gonna be that. Except the angel who's supposed to defeat him and the demon who's supposed to make sure he triumphs have mainstreamed and don't much feel like giving up their cush jobs. HQ on both sides isn't having any, and hijinks ensue.

I got this book at "New York Is Book Country" in 1990. Workman had a big push on to make the book a hit...their booth that year had a bunch of editorial assistants and editors all dressed up funny, waving signs about the world ending tomorrow, passing out fliers promoting the book, yelling provocative predictions drawn from the book at passers-by. I loved it as street theater, and bought the book because I liked their energetic promotion of it.

I chuckled several times, laughed out loud once, and put the book away from 1990 until it was lost in the move in 2008, and never once in 18 years remembered that I owned it or had read it. I found the above para and was mildly surprised I'd bothered to review such a slight bagatelle of a book.

But credit where credit is due: The fact that Pestilence, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, retired when penicillin was introduced and was replaced by Pollution, made me laugh and laugh hard. I'm still giggling 22+ years on.