Nerdish hero David Perkins falls in love with a girl in a painting, Philippa, who was burned as a witch 400 years ago. By amazing coincidence a lock of her hair comes up for auction. By totally staggering coincidence, David remembers a seedy London shop called HONEST JOHN'S HOUSE OF CLONES. How very, very convenient...
The trouble with the cloned Philippa isn't merely that she comes expensive (Honest John asks remarkably little, but that lock of hair was £15,000). It's that she somehow knows too much about the 21st century and already has a boyfriend who isn't David. Was everything a setup by her alleged father, suspiciously resembling the one-eyed god Odin? And who are all these similar-looking chaps with a missing eye? Attack of the Clones!
David's rollercoaster adventures continue with police arrest for murder, escape after a one-eyed lawyer gives him (a brand-new ploy) a cake hidden in a file, and abduction for sinister experiments aboard what certainly seems to be a UFO. The only logical explanation, of course, is a race of highly evolved, space-travelling frogs.
Further story convolutions are largely indescribable. Key ingredients include frogspawn, dandruff and (the secret of interstellar travel) white sugar. Soon there's more than one Philippa in circulation. Froggy transformations abound. David makes astonishing discoveries about his true identity and enormous family. Libel lawyers advise us not to quote the Microsoft jokes.
Cheerful silliness in the characteristic Holt style. --David Langford
]]>Young heroine Karen is herself a dragon, but for love's sake has taken on the almost human form of an estate agent. Alas, she's hopeless at romance--unfortunate for Britain, since as the hereditary Dragon Marshall of Bank Holidays she causes rainy side effects of up to 2,000,000,000,000 litres/second/square kilometre whenever angry or upset ...
No wonder rebellious TV weathermen, enraged by sabotaged predictions of sunny days, have kidnapped Karen's father and trapped him in the third shape available to dragons: a goldfish. But the kidnappers fall foul of imperialist conspirators who reckon Britain's weather made it great, inspiring us to go out and conquer all those hot places. Behind this outfit are the even more megalomaniac schemes of an Aussie media baron who for excellent legal reasons isn't called Murdoch.
We also learn about Britain's real state religion, featuring human sacrifices to the Queen, and the North Welsh cult which believes "that when we die, we'll be reunited on the other side with all the used paper hankies we've discarded over the years." Better not to mention the potshots at Microsoft Windows.
Full of comic invention and crazy set-pieces, it's guaranteed to cheer up a rainy day. --David Langford
]]>For Howard the pretend Viking, who joined the War-Band of Sigurd Bloodtooth (Smethwick chapter) in hope of pulling girls, Valhalla is a gory shoot-up with modern weapons. For older killers like Attila, Napoleon and Hitler it's like the thrilling suspense of watching paint dry. For Lin Kortright, theatrical agent to the gods, it's endless gruelling auditions for the part of Lin Kortright--every time, he "dies" on stage. Carol the cocktail waitress lands in a similar dead-end job as a serving wench in the traditional Valhalla, where there's a special briefing for Americans:
"Skyfather, his message: You in Kansas any more are not."
Indeed Odin gives everyone personalised Valhallas that nastily twist their own wish-fulfilment dreams. Clever one-liners and bizarre ideas come thick and fast as ever--few people suspected that the "voices" heard by Joan of Arc included police radios and Fairy Liquid ads. But Holt's emphasis on death and afterlife makes Valhalla a darker than usual comedy. There are manic chases aplenty, but can anyone escape Odin forever? Carol at least intends to have fun trying. Wild humour with a bracing touch of grimness. --David Langford
]]>Djinn Rummy—In an aspirin bottle, nobody can hear you scream. Outside an aspirin bottle, however, things are somewhat different. And when Kayaguchiya Integrated Circuits III (Kiss, to his friends), a Force Twelve genie with an attitude, is released after 14 years of living with two dozen white tablets, there’s bound to be trouble…
]]>Ye Gods!—Being a hero bothers Jason Derry. It’s easy to get maladjusted when your mom’s a suburban housewife and your dad’s the Supreme Being. It can be a real drag slaying monsters and retrieving golden fleeces from fire–spitting dragons, and then having to tidy your room before you can watch Star Trek. But it’s not the relentless tedium of imperishable glory that finally brings Jason to the end of his rope; it’s something so funny that it’s got to be taken seriously. Deadly seriously…
]]>