I'm very surprised that nobody has written a review of this book, yet. In the hopes that this will be useful to someone, here goes.For me, reading Tom Holt's Ye Gods is another attempt to find a funny fantasy writer like Terry Pratchett. The book actually reminded me of some of Pratchett's earlier Discworld books (for example, The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic): short on plot, long on silliness, with a few insights sprinkled here and there.The plot is very similar to the Percy Jackson books (written by Rick Riordan, although Ye Gods is more geared toward adults and appears to be a stand-alone novel, where the Percy Jackson books are a series. In both, though, the main characters are caught between the Titans and the gods.In Ye Gods, Jason Derry is the son of Jupiter (the Roman god) and a mortal woman. This, of course, makes him a Hero, when he's not being a pest by doing things like killing large monsters and bringing home the bodies. (Imagine the cleaning bills!)Jupiter and the other gods are none too pleased with the way the world has turned out -- particularly that humanity is largely ignoring them. See, in addition to stealing fire and giving it to mankind, Prometheus also told man the first joke. Armed with humor, mankind was then able to successfully deal with life independent of the gods. So Jupiter and his fellow ex-gods try to change the world into a place where there is no laughter, so that they can have complete control over humans. Prometheus and another Titan have a plan to save the world. Jason figures very large in this plan.The book is fairly well written. Sometimes the humor (or humour, I suppose, since this is a British author) seems a little forced, but there were some good chuckles and a few good belly laughs. The characterization isn't terribly compelling -- something that I notice about Terry Pratchett's first books, too. Since this is one of Tom Holt's earlier books, I'm hopeful that he improves in his later books, too.
