looking for book recommendations
So.
I'm on a kick where I'm looking for satisfying, well-written books about, well, angels. You all might know why. Anyway, I was reading Smoke & Mirrors when this madness seized me, and given Gaiman's story "Murder Mysteries" thought Good Omens might be a good place to start. It wasn't.
I couldn't help thinking of a more care-worn Castiel when I read this from "Murder Mysteries":
"A block or so down the road there was a bench, and when I reached it I sat down. I threw the stub of the cigarette onto the pavement, hard, and watched it shower orange sparks.
Someone said, "I'll buy a cigarette off you, pal. Here."
A hand in front of my face, holding a quarter. I looked up.
He did not look old, although I would not have been prepared to say how old he was. Late thirties, perhaps. Mid-forties. He wore a long, shabby coat, colorless under the yellow streetlamps, and his eyes were dark."
The mysterious coat-wearing stranger is, of course, an angel--Raguel, the Vengeance of the Lord. He pays for his cigarette with a story; when one of his fellow angels is found dead, it turns out it is Raguel's calling to figure this sort of thing out. What unfolds is a short exploration of understanding God's will and one's own purpose in existence, while trying to do what is just and good and right when there is no easy or clear answer. Even for God's own angels.
(Most of all, it is a story about love.)
"And then, before I could understand what he was doing, he leaned down and kissed me, gently, on the cheek. His stubble was rough and prickly, but his breath was surprisingly sweet. He whispered into my ear: "I never fell. I don't care what they say. I'm still doing my job, as I see it."
My cheek burned where his lips had touched it.
He straightened up. "But I still want to go home."
You can see why I'd recommend this to anyone who likes SPN.
Good Omens is . . . something entirely different.
"And just when you'd think [humans] were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger."
As much as I enjoy these two writers, I wasn't totally enthralled. Some sections dragged, particularly when some of the gags lasted a little too long. Plus, the character development (for an admittedly large cast of characters) wasn't particularly deep. Which is what you get when 90% of the characters are there for the laughs. The end involves a very humanist message that is really only saved from being as trite and cozy as it could be because, well, because it's Gaiman and Pratchett
"Aziraphale had tried to explain it to [Crowley] once. The whole point, he'd said--this was somewhere around 1020, when they'd first reached their little Arrangement--the whole point was that when a human was good or bad it was because they wanted to be. Whereas people like Crowley and, of course, himself, were set in their ways right from the start. People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they had the opportunity to become definitively wicked."
The problem I think is that Good Omens read very much to me like a Terry Pratchett novel, and I wanted more Gaiman. I adore Discworld. But the structure, pace, and plotting of a Pratchett novel involves a series of jokes building up to a huge punch line (actually, Gaiman is usually geared towards the punch line, too, but he's not what I would call funny ha-ha). I'm glad I read Good Omens and would recommend it to anyone who likes Discworld (especially since some favorite characters make an appearance), but I've got that reader's frustration of having wanted to read something else.
So, any recommendations for me? Please, jump in!
I'm on a kick where I'm looking for satisfying, well-written books about, well, angels. You all might know why. Anyway, I was reading Smoke & Mirrors when this madness seized me, and given Gaiman's story "Murder Mysteries" thought Good Omens might be a good place to start. It wasn't.
I couldn't help thinking of a more care-worn Castiel when I read this from "Murder Mysteries":
"A block or so down the road there was a bench, and when I reached it I sat down. I threw the stub of the cigarette onto the pavement, hard, and watched it shower orange sparks.
Someone said, "I'll buy a cigarette off you, pal. Here."
A hand in front of my face, holding a quarter. I looked up.
He did not look old, although I would not have been prepared to say how old he was. Late thirties, perhaps. Mid-forties. He wore a long, shabby coat, colorless under the yellow streetlamps, and his eyes were dark."
The mysterious coat-wearing stranger is, of course, an angel--Raguel, the Vengeance of the Lord. He pays for his cigarette with a story; when one of his fellow angels is found dead, it turns out it is Raguel's calling to figure this sort of thing out. What unfolds is a short exploration of understanding God's will and one's own purpose in existence, while trying to do what is just and good and right when there is no easy or clear answer. Even for God's own angels.
(Most of all, it is a story about love.)
"And then, before I could understand what he was doing, he leaned down and kissed me, gently, on the cheek. His stubble was rough and prickly, but his breath was surprisingly sweet. He whispered into my ear: "I never fell. I don't care what they say. I'm still doing my job, as I see it."
My cheek burned where his lips had touched it.
He straightened up. "But I still want to go home."
You can see why I'd recommend this to anyone who likes SPN.
Good Omens is . . . something entirely different.
"And just when you'd think [humans] were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger."
As much as I enjoy these two writers, I wasn't totally enthralled. Some sections dragged, particularly when some of the gags lasted a little too long. Plus, the character development (for an admittedly large cast of characters) wasn't particularly deep. Which is what you get when 90% of the characters are there for the laughs. The end involves a very humanist message that is really only saved from being as trite and cozy as it could be because, well, because it's Gaiman and Pratchett
"Aziraphale had tried to explain it to [Crowley] once. The whole point, he'd said--this was somewhere around 1020, when they'd first reached their little Arrangement--the whole point was that when a human was good or bad it was because they wanted to be. Whereas people like Crowley and, of course, himself, were set in their ways right from the start. People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they had the opportunity to become definitively wicked."
The problem I think is that Good Omens read very much to me like a Terry Pratchett novel, and I wanted more Gaiman. I adore Discworld. But the structure, pace, and plotting of a Pratchett novel involves a series of jokes building up to a huge punch line (actually, Gaiman is usually geared towards the punch line, too, but he's not what I would call funny ha-ha). I'm glad I read Good Omens and would recommend it to anyone who likes Discworld (especially since some favorite characters make an appearance), but I've got that reader's frustration of having wanted to read something else.
So, any recommendations for me? Please, jump in!