Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Good Omens, The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman is a darkly comic novel originally published in 1990. It is a satirical imagining of the Biblical apocalypse featuring angels, demons, humans, and the hosts of Heaven and Hell.

Pratchett is well known for his ˙comic fantasy Discworld series, which spans 41 books. Gaiman is the author of, among other titles, Stardust, American Gods, and the graphic novel series The Sandman.

In 2019, Good Omens was made into a television series released on the streaming service Amazon Prime.

Plot Summary

Aziraphale, an angel, and Crowley, a demon—adversaries since the Great Fall from the Garden of Eden—have been living on Earth and attempting to steer humanity’s moral course. In those many millennia, however, they have grown fond of life among the humans and developed a tenuous friendship with each other. One day, Crowley receives a delivery from two fellow demons: a basket containing the infant Antichrist, who will gain access to his full powers when he turns 11 and trigger Armageddon. Crowley is charged with overseeing his placement with the American Cultural Attaché, Thaddeus Dowling. Due to a mix up at the hospital, however, the Antichrist, Adam, ends up with the Young family in the fictional village of Lower Tadfield, Oxfordshire, England.

As Adam Young reaches his 11th birthday and the End of Times approaches, other characters enter the narrative: Anathema Device, a new Lower Tadfield resident and descendent of Agnes Nutter, a 17th-century witch whose prophecies have so far proven 100 percent accurate and which Anathema hopes can help her avert Armageddon; Witchfinder Shadwell and his young protégé, Newton Pulsifer, who track down witches and all things occult across England; the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse—Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence (renamed Pollution)—who begin to wreak havoc across the globe.

After a collision between Crowley’s Bentley and Anathema’s bicycle, Aziraphale comes into possession of Agnes’s book of prophecies. Interpreting the omens, he realizes the End is nigh, and he entreats Crowley to help him stop it. They eventually charge Shadwell with the task of killing the Antichrist. Adam, meanwhile, befriends his new neighbor, Anathema, who opens his eyes to deforestation, climate change, species extinction, and other pressing environmental issues. This knowledge, coupled with Adam’s natural innocence and love of his friends, tips the balance of Adam’s moral scales toward goodness.

On the day before Armageddon, signs and portents become manifest: Atlantis rises from the sea, cities are overrun by nature, massive stores of plutonium vanish from nuclear reactors, and the M25 motorway becomes a deadly path of fiery doom that emits a chanting for the coming of the Lord of Darkness. The epicenter of this evil energy is Lower Tadfield, and all the players converge on the Tadfield Air Base for the final confrontation. Adam, now fully cognizant of his identity and powers, heads to the air base with his friends in tow, vowing to stop the madness.

Adam and his friends confront the Horsepersons and dispatch them with homemade magical artifacts. Even Death, the most powerful of the four, departs in defeat. While it looks like Armageddon has been averted, the Metatron, God’s spokesperson, and Beelzebub, its counterpart, appear on the scene, ordering Adam to comply with Fate and allow the Final Battle to take place. Adam refuses, imagining a better way than total annihilation. Aziraphale and Crowley, their lives in jeopardy for their attempted subversion of the Grand Plan, argue that perhaps Adam’s defiance is an unforeseen part of the plan. Confused and with no rebuttal, the Metatron and Beelzebub return to their masters for further instructions while the armies of Heaven and Hell stand down. Everything on Earth returns to normal.

The next morning, Adam, in trouble with his parents for his role in the previous day’s unpleasantness, sulks in his yard with his dog. When his friends ride off to watch a circus set up outside of town, Adam creates and escapes through a hole in the hedge, running through the meadows with his dog and stealing apples from a neighbor’s tree.