About book The Second Tom Holt Omnibus: My Hero - Who's Afraid Of Beowulf? (2002)
This omnibus consists of two of Tom Holt's earlier works. I have reviewed each one below.Who's afraid of Beowulf?What are the deeds of heroes, except a few frightened people doing the best they can in the circumstances? (p. 222)What striked me first was how much Tom Holt's writing reminds me of Terry Pratchett - now I love Terry Pratchett, so this was a very good start. I love authors who can write sentences like this: There is an electrical-goods shop in Wick, and if you have the determination of a hero used to long and apparently impossible quests you can eventually find it, although it will of course be closed for lunch when you do. (p. 101) and this: She tried to move, but could not; her muscles received the command from her brain and replied that they had never heard anything so absurd in their lives. (p. 11). I also loved how he ended one chapter with a beautiful image of fully grown golden eagle landing on the King's fist - and then begins the next like this: 'Will someone,' said the King, 'get this bird off me?'.After fighting against the sorcerer king and almost beating him but having him escape at the last minute, Hrolf Earthstar and his men goes to sleep for twelve hundred years and are awakened when archaeologist Hildy Frederiksen enters their buried ship. Of course they want to finish the sorcerer king but things has changed quite a bit in the time they have been asleep - although some things haven't changed at all. With the help of Hildy they try to blend in while hunting for the sorcerer king but a group of vikings wearing grey suits, helmets and weapons tend to stand out quite a bit. Even so, they manage to locate the sorcerer king who has done quite well for himself in the centuries the vikings have been asleep. The final battle is comingI liked quite a few things about the book. The writing - as already mentioned - is great and the idea is really good. The book has lots of amusing scenes and I really like the vikings' enthusiasm for battle and how they try to find it whereever they can (even though Valhalla has degraded quite a bit) and how they to their disappointment realize that modern man is a whimp.Still I found the book somewhat lacking. The major villain is just not villain enough - although I love that he is the main reason we have computers and internet and that he has created them in such a way that the occasionally disappearance of data we all see as a part of working with computers, in reality is the sorcerer king taking our data because they look interesting! Also, the final battle was just disappointing.Since this was one of Tom Holt's early works, originally published back in 1988, and he's still writing. I think I will check out some of his later works because this book has potential enough. I'll of course start with the other part of this omnibus, My Hero.3 stars.My Hero"Authors take untrue things, people who don't exist, events that never happened, and make other people believe in them Belief is water poured on the blazing chip-pan of creation. A fictional thing which people believe in can never be real, but it can exist far more vehemently than any number of real things which are too boring for anybody to be interested in." (p. 298)This book is a mess. Such a mess. Oh, but in a good way. Who cares if the plot doesn't make sense all the time? Who cares if it's sometimes all over the place and jumps around in twists and turns and seemingly just follow the author's every whim when the result is such a fun and playful book?I'm not sure how to describe what it's about because in some ways it's indescribable - I guess a result of the plot being so chaotic. It's Thursday Next before Jasper Fforde thought of it in some ways - but not quite. This is all it's own and very entertaining. The story itself is entertaining but the writing is so good, filled with quotes like this: "One of the drawbacks to secret passages, however, is that they're secret. If they weren't, they'd be painfully obvious passages and the builders couldn't charge nearly as much for them." (p. 363) or "In the beginning ... Was the Word? Not quite. To be strictly accurate, in the beginning was the Screen; and the screen was with God and the screen was God. And, admittedl, the Word moved upon the face of the screen, was put into pitch ten, italics, bold, right margin justify, macro/WORD and all the rest of it, but that came later. Nowadays, the screen just thinks it's God, particularly when you want to print out." (p. 279)This is about books. About fiction. About fantasy fiction. About characters in fantasy fiction. Well, characters in any type of fiction actually.This is a who's who of children's literature, of crime fiction and others. Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Hercule Poirot, Dracula, Hamlet. Pride and Prejudice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, War and Peace, House on Pooh Corner.Now, I really should get around to saying what the book is about, shouldn't I? Well, let's try. This is a story about what happens when authors mess up. One such author gets stranded in his own Western novel and looks for help by entering the dreams of fantasy author Jane - who isn't a very good writer. Now, Jane has to save her author colleague by sending in her own hero, Regalian, to help him out. But to get him back into reality, they have to enter several different novels and eventually, Jane herself gets pulled in.But this is also the story of Hamlet getting bored by being Hamlet and looking for another job. It's in fact many stories.Now, somehow Holt makes Hamlet, Regalian, Jane, the Western author, a very powerful agent and several other both real and fictive characters meet up and either join forces or fight it off in this very strange, messy and funny book.Holt does take some cheap swings at fantasy fiction like "Regalian had been Regalian for so long that he could barely remember being himself. This is an occupational hazard of heroes of fantasy fiction, a genre which tends to come in eighteen-hundred-page trilogies, and the syndrome is usually referred to in the profession as 'good steady work'. Nevertheless, it has its drawbacks, principally the disorientation effect when a hero comes off duty. It is disconcerting and often humiliating to come home after a day of strangling dragons with your bare hands to find you can't get the lid off the pickled onion jar. " (p. 280) and "/.../ there's a fair chance that by the time a fantasy novel is past its first hundred pages only twenty per cent of the readers (not necessarily including the author) have the foggiest idea what's going on /.../" (p. 312). Of course, if you think of Robert Jordan and The Wheel of Time, this is spot on! And of course, Holt takes all the rules he himself has invented about the relations between fiction and reality and twists them and turn them and make an absolutely creative and entertaining story: "The laws of reality are bad enough. The laws of fiction are downright terrible. In reality, things generally get worse, nothing ever goes entirely right, there is no free lunch, people fall out of love, pay taxes and die. In fiction, right triumph over wrong, long-lost brothers are united in improbable circumstances, everything works out all right in the end, and boy meets, loses and finally gets girl. Whether the participants like it or not. The laws of fiction are unbendable, and there are no loopholes. Furthermore, even the timetable is beyond the control of the people involved, because things happen at the aesthetically correct time; not a page early, not a paragraph late. There are some things even the author can do nothing about." (p. 326) and "Everybody knows that characters in books can do things that ordinary people can't. They can jump off tall buildings and survive. They can remember, word for word, conversations they had sixteen years ago. They can fire ten shots from a six-shot revolver without reloading. They can encounter historical figures who haven't actually been born at the time the book is set. They can get from Paris to Marseilles faster than it would take a mortal just to get to the front of the checking-in queue, and still arrive cool, refreshed and without a splitting headache. They can even fade out at the end of Chapter Five hanging by their fingernails from a precipice and stroll on at the beginning of Chapter Seven in immaculate evening dress without a word of explanation. This is called Dramatic Licence." (p. 311)This explains so much - and also, this is a great fun introduction to some of the subjects in literary philosophy. For instance, why do we care about literary characters? Maybe because they're real and existing in their own kind of reality ... or at least, it seems that Holt thinks that.4 stars.
When Vikings awaken from a twelve-hundred year nap in the very first chapter, I'm hooked. tWhat a great read! Tom Holt doesn’t let a page go by without a good laugh. He has been called the British Christopher Moore, but he is somewhat more restrained and typically British in his humor. The story posits old Viking heroes coming back to life to fight the final battle against the forces of old evil. Magic, buses, shape changers, wizards, two power sources, and Vikings in hainmail, with weapons and dressed in grey/black British business suits. Throw in a female American archaeology professor and the tale is complete.
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