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Tom Holt Omnibus #2
Mightier Than The Sword: Omnibus 2: "My Hero", "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?"
Two fantastic comic fantasies - MY HERO and WHO'S AFRAID OF BEOWULF? - reissued with brilliant new cover style.
This omnibus brings together two of Tom Holt's best-loved stories. In My Hero, Jane thinks writing novels is a piece of cake. Until hers starts writing back. At which point, she really should stop. The one thing she should not do is go into the book herself. After all, that’s what heroes are for. Unfortunately, the world of fiction is a far more complicated place than she ever imagined, and she’s about to land her hero right in it. In Who's Afraid of Beowulf?, Hrolf Earthstar, the last Norse King of Caithness, and his 12 champions are awakened from a centuries-long sleep when archaeologist Hildy Frederiksen finds their grave mound. Not only that, but Hrolf decides to carry on his ancient war against the powers of darkness. Starting with the Bakerloo Line.
This omnibus brings together two of Tom Holt's best-loved stories. In My Hero, Jane thinks writing novels is a piece of cake. Until hers starts writing back. At which point, she really should stop. The one thing she should not do is go into the book herself. After all, that’s what heroes are for. Unfortunately, the world of fiction is a far more complicated place than she ever imagined, and she’s about to land her hero right in it. In Who's Afraid of Beowulf?, Hrolf Earthstar, the last Norse King of Caithness, and his 12 champions are awakened from a centuries-long sleep when archaeologist Hildy Frederiksen finds their grave mound. Not only that, but Hrolf decides to carry on his ancient war against the powers of darkness. Starting with the Bakerloo Line.
576 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
1 person is currently reading
187 people want to read
About the author
Tom Holt
99 books1,186 followersTom Holt (Thomas Charles Louis Holt) is a British novelist.
He was born in London, the son of novelist Hazel Holt, and was educated at Westminster School, Wadham College, Oxford, and The College of Law, London.
Holt's works include mythopoeic novels which parody or take as their theme various aspects of mythology, history or literature and develop them in new and often humorous ways. He has also produced a number of "straight" historical novels writing as Thomas Holt and fantasy novels writing as K.J. Parker.
He was born in London, the son of novelist Hazel Holt, and was educated at Westminster School, Wadham College, Oxford, and The College of Law, London.
Holt's works include mythopoeic novels which parody or take as their theme various aspects of mythology, history or literature and develop them in new and often humorous ways. He has also produced a number of "straight" historical novels writing as Thomas Holt and fantasy novels writing as K.J. Parker.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 27, 2021
I love these omnibus editions of Tom Holt's work! Although his writing can be a little hit and miss for me sometimes, both of these stories were excellent.
1. Who's Afraid of Beowulf? (1988) 5⭐
An eager young archaeologist stumbles upon a career-making find: a perfectly preserved Viking longship. Only the King and his warriors have been in an enchanted sleep and are now awake, compelled to fight an ancient evil in modern guise. Hilarious!
2. My Hero (1996) 5⭐
I absolutely loved the idea of this story! A novelist is contacted by an author trapped in the world of his own writing. The novelist recruits the hero of her own work to go into the other author's world and rescue him. Tons of fun literary allusions (Dracula! Frankenstein!) and a twisted plan to use fiction to cause an apocalypse in the real world.
Reminded me a bit of Jasper Fforde's excellent Thursday Next series (starting with the The Eyre Affair), which is a favourite of mine. Fans of that might enjoy this one too!
1. Who's Afraid of Beowulf? (1988) 5⭐
An eager young archaeologist stumbles upon a career-making find: a perfectly preserved Viking longship. Only the King and his warriors have been in an enchanted sleep and are now awake, compelled to fight an ancient evil in modern guise. Hilarious!
2. My Hero (1996) 5⭐
I absolutely loved the idea of this story! A novelist is contacted by an author trapped in the world of his own writing. The novelist recruits the hero of her own work to go into the other author's world and rescue him. Tons of fun literary allusions (Dracula! Frankenstein!) and a twisted plan to use fiction to cause an apocalypse in the real world.
Reminded me a bit of Jasper Fforde's excellent Thursday Next series (starting with the The Eyre Affair), which is a favourite of mine. Fans of that might enjoy this one too!
November 29, 2010
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 coming
I 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.
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 coming
I 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.
September 23, 2024
This is a great omnibus, and therefore gets two reviews in one...
As with all Tom Holt's books, there are complex plots and vast array of characters to keep track of that somehow manages to resolve in full at the end of the 2 stories in this collection. Sadly, I didn't find it as funny as blond bombshell te-tum, but that is probably in part due to the high expectations that book set, and the speed I'm reading at. This is definitely a collection I will read again.
'Who's afraid of Beowulf' is an interesting and entertaining exploration of archaeology gone awry, ancient vikings and modern technology. When an ancient viking ship burial wakes up, vikings meet a 21st century female archaeologist an ancient quest to defeat an evil sorcerer beings again, this time travelling by minibus from Scotland to London and back. It isn't a tense, 'thriller', but is instead a hilarious story of the necessary preparations to connect energy forces to car batteries and magic broaches before facing the final show down. The viking ballads, concepts, history and hero legends are well researched for this, although naturally twisted to form the parody plot. As with 'Blond Bombshell' Tom Holt makes fun of modern technologies and power struggles.
'My Hero' is an equally entertaining exploration of literature and the challenges (technical capabilities and rights) of writing fiction. The characters from one story are forced to enter another in order to rescue a real person who has been sucked into his own fictional creation. This is by far the most complex story, with the characters jumping from one story to another by opening a book, with characters from all over the literary world - Piglet; Sherlock Holmes; Moley and Ratty; Titiana; Alice's White Rabbit and more - making cameo appearances with a twist.
As with all Tom Holt's books, there are complex plots and vast array of characters to keep track of that somehow manages to resolve in full at the end of the 2 stories in this collection. Sadly, I didn't find it as funny as blond bombshell te-tum, but that is probably in part due to the high expectations that book set, and the speed I'm reading at. This is definitely a collection I will read again.
'Who's afraid of Beowulf' is an interesting and entertaining exploration of archaeology gone awry, ancient vikings and modern technology. When an ancient viking ship burial wakes up, vikings meet a 21st century female archaeologist an ancient quest to defeat an evil sorcerer beings again, this time travelling by minibus from Scotland to London and back. It isn't a tense, 'thriller', but is instead a hilarious story of the necessary preparations to connect energy forces to car batteries and magic broaches before facing the final show down. The viking ballads, concepts, history and hero legends are well researched for this, although naturally twisted to form the parody plot. As with 'Blond Bombshell' Tom Holt makes fun of modern technologies and power struggles.
'My Hero' is an equally entertaining exploration of literature and the challenges (technical capabilities and rights) of writing fiction. The characters from one story are forced to enter another in order to rescue a real person who has been sucked into his own fictional creation. This is by far the most complex story, with the characters jumping from one story to another by opening a book, with characters from all over the literary world - Piglet; Sherlock Holmes; Moley and Ratty; Titiana; Alice's White Rabbit and more - making cameo appearances with a twist.
May 30, 2023
My first foray in Tom Holt's wacky worlds. Found this omnibus edition at one of my favorite used book stores and figured if I was going to try out this author, why not with a 2-for-1 hardcover edition? In a fantastically unorganized manner I decided to read the second story first, as they are unrelated and the second premise sounded more interesting.
1. Who's Afraid of Beowulf? (1988)
Expectations were low given that this was about Vikings and that's not really of interest, but thought I would give it a whirl since it was included in the two for one. So glad I did! The mish mash of civilization 1200 years ago to today and the King's LACK of surprise stayed with me as one of the most interesting components of the story. The theme still resonates today: technological advances do not automatically equal a more civilized society, in many cases quite the reverse. Also the magical pebbles and dried bones and talismans among the Vikings fascinated. These artifacts lead to questioning how little we appreciate the magic behind all the technology in our society today. Who really knows how a toaster or car engine works on principal? Or how the iPhone connects to the wifi, or the apps refresh, etc. Perhaps the funniest part was just the sheer logistics of feeding, clothing, and transporting 12 Vikings around modern day London inconspicuously! Holt also creates a strong female lead in Hildy. She doesn't cower or twitter or stutter in the face of the incomprehensible, but rather, approaches and accepts the situation with an admirable inevitably. Like "oh yes, I've been fantasizing about walking into the middle of a real life Viking saga / poem all my life and all my research and study have of course led me to this exact moment." Lots of suspense and absurdity in equal measure, with likable quirky characters and interesting world building to round it all out. One of my new favs!
2. My Hero (1996)
Well this was an absolutely delightfully surprise. Felt like a mashup of several of my favorite authors: Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently series) + Terry Pratchett (definitely Good Omens vibes with plot line to summon the end of days and an appearance from the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse who were *not* excited about being cast in the role) + Jasper Fforde. Note: My Hero was originally published in 1996 - a full FIVE years before Fforde's first installment of the Thursday Next series - The Eyre Affair.
I was amazed to discover that I much preferred My Hero to Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series! The heroine of My Hero is authoress Jane, and she is not nearly as brazen a heroine as Thursday Next. Jane is more of the downtrodden and exasperated/resigned type. But she's far less likely to just randomly jump into a situation without thinking... or at least Jane thinks about first, decides she's skeptical and the situation is impossible and it would be MADNESS to even attempt a rescue, and then does ultimately make the leap anyways, but with very strong reservations! She leaps into the fictional world to save a fellow writer and her own characters. The writer is Skinner, he's been trapped in one of his mediocre Western novels for 36 YEARS and he's at his wits end. Desperate to escape, Skinner manages to find a medicine man among the tribes of the Wild West and communicates with Jane through one of her dreams. She doesn't believe it when she wakes up, but then her computer starts ghost writing messages to her and she can't ignore the signs.
The early bits describing Skinner in his Western trope were wearying, in part because I don't really enjoy Westerns so found it challenging to care, and also because frankly Skinner isn't all that likeable... not sure I would feel that compelled to rescue him either!
There's also all sorts of plot exposition on how fiction works, how characters work within fiction, setting up Regalian as the hero of Jane's fantasy series as she struggles with a battle scene and wrestles a bit on her own - with writer's block.
Once this hits about page 50 it takes off at warp speed as a romp through famous literary works and borrowing characters liberally - there's Hamlet and Titania from Midsummer Night's Dream (Skinner becomes Bottom the Weaver in his donkey / loverboy for Titania role), and Count Dracula makes a trip to the hospital where he gets endless blood infusions as the doctors can't figure out WHERE the blood is going?! There are references to Frankenstein, the rabbit and looking glass from Alice in Wonderland, and trips through Wind in the Willows, a brief encounter with Mr. Darcy and then Mrs. Bennet as she's trying to find new eligible chaps in the neighborhood for her daughters. Jane winds up in War and Peace for a spell. There are chases through the underbelly of the Library of Congress and conversations with a man who doesn't exist (his existence would defy the laws of reality, therefore... he must not exist), an escape from the slush pile, and battles with goblins.
I did skim over some of the metaphysical descriptions of how and where fiction and reality merge and diverge and all the governing structure of this universe that Holt is world building because it just got a bit tedious. But when the action gets going it zips along at a breakneck pace! Really enjoyed this one and the perfect blend of literary genres. The ending was a little lackluster to be honest, was hoping at least one of the romance pairings would make it either in fiction or the real world in some absurdist and comical happy ending.
1. Who's Afraid of Beowulf? (1988)
Expectations were low given that this was about Vikings and that's not really of interest, but thought I would give it a whirl since it was included in the two for one. So glad I did! The mish mash of civilization 1200 years ago to today and the King's LACK of surprise stayed with me as one of the most interesting components of the story. The theme still resonates today: technological advances do not automatically equal a more civilized society, in many cases quite the reverse. Also the magical pebbles and dried bones and talismans among the Vikings fascinated. These artifacts lead to questioning how little we appreciate the magic behind all the technology in our society today. Who really knows how a toaster or car engine works on principal? Or how the iPhone connects to the wifi, or the apps refresh, etc. Perhaps the funniest part was just the sheer logistics of feeding, clothing, and transporting 12 Vikings around modern day London inconspicuously! Holt also creates a strong female lead in Hildy. She doesn't cower or twitter or stutter in the face of the incomprehensible, but rather, approaches and accepts the situation with an admirable inevitably. Like "oh yes, I've been fantasizing about walking into the middle of a real life Viking saga / poem all my life and all my research and study have of course led me to this exact moment." Lots of suspense and absurdity in equal measure, with likable quirky characters and interesting world building to round it all out. One of my new favs!
2. My Hero (1996)
Well this was an absolutely delightfully surprise. Felt like a mashup of several of my favorite authors: Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently series) + Terry Pratchett (definitely Good Omens vibes with plot line to summon the end of days and an appearance from the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse who were *not* excited about being cast in the role) + Jasper Fforde. Note: My Hero was originally published in 1996 - a full FIVE years before Fforde's first installment of the Thursday Next series - The Eyre Affair.
I was amazed to discover that I much preferred My Hero to Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series! The heroine of My Hero is authoress Jane, and she is not nearly as brazen a heroine as Thursday Next. Jane is more of the downtrodden and exasperated/resigned type. But she's far less likely to just randomly jump into a situation without thinking... or at least Jane thinks about first, decides she's skeptical and the situation is impossible and it would be MADNESS to even attempt a rescue, and then does ultimately make the leap anyways, but with very strong reservations! She leaps into the fictional world to save a fellow writer and her own characters. The writer is Skinner, he's been trapped in one of his mediocre Western novels for 36 YEARS and he's at his wits end. Desperate to escape, Skinner manages to find a medicine man among the tribes of the Wild West and communicates with Jane through one of her dreams. She doesn't believe it when she wakes up, but then her computer starts ghost writing messages to her and she can't ignore the signs.
The early bits describing Skinner in his Western trope were wearying, in part because I don't really enjoy Westerns so found it challenging to care, and also because frankly Skinner isn't all that likeable... not sure I would feel that compelled to rescue him either!
There's also all sorts of plot exposition on how fiction works, how characters work within fiction, setting up Regalian as the hero of Jane's fantasy series as she struggles with a battle scene and wrestles a bit on her own - with writer's block.
Once this hits about page 50 it takes off at warp speed as a romp through famous literary works and borrowing characters liberally - there's Hamlet and Titania from Midsummer Night's Dream (Skinner becomes Bottom the Weaver in his donkey / loverboy for Titania role), and Count Dracula makes a trip to the hospital where he gets endless blood infusions as the doctors can't figure out WHERE the blood is going?! There are references to Frankenstein, the rabbit and looking glass from Alice in Wonderland, and trips through Wind in the Willows, a brief encounter with Mr. Darcy and then Mrs. Bennet as she's trying to find new eligible chaps in the neighborhood for her daughters. Jane winds up in War and Peace for a spell. There are chases through the underbelly of the Library of Congress and conversations with a man who doesn't exist (his existence would defy the laws of reality, therefore... he must not exist), an escape from the slush pile, and battles with goblins.
I did skim over some of the metaphysical descriptions of how and where fiction and reality merge and diverge and all the governing structure of this universe that Holt is world building because it just got a bit tedious. But when the action gets going it zips along at a breakneck pace! Really enjoyed this one and the perfect blend of literary genres. The ending was a little lackluster to be honest, was hoping at least one of the romance pairings would make it either in fiction or the real world in some absurdist and comical happy ending.
November 19, 2023
Two fun but flawed novels in one volume.
Who's afraid of Beowulf?- Is a light and simple fantasy adventure tale about reawakened Vikings that is fun and funny but lacks complexity and threat. Still, entertaining enough.
My Hero- If it stuck with the brilliant plot as described in the blurb, of a writer writing a novel and it begins to write itself (or write back) and her going into it, it would be a lot less convoluted and more focused than it ended up being. As it is it involves way more plot devices and characters, including all sorts from classical literature, than it really needed to. The classical references fall into cliched popular misconceptions, which irked me as well. Still, it's very ambitious and can be clever, but that may also lie in its faults.
Imaginative and nowhere near a heroic failure, but not amongst Tom Holt's best, I'm afraid.
Who's afraid of Beowulf?- Is a light and simple fantasy adventure tale about reawakened Vikings that is fun and funny but lacks complexity and threat. Still, entertaining enough.
My Hero- If it stuck with the brilliant plot as described in the blurb, of a writer writing a novel and it begins to write itself (or write back) and her going into it, it would be a lot less convoluted and more focused than it ended up being. As it is it involves way more plot devices and characters, including all sorts from classical literature, than it really needed to. The classical references fall into cliched popular misconceptions, which irked me as well. Still, it's very ambitious and can be clever, but that may also lie in its faults.
Imaginative and nowhere near a heroic failure, but not amongst Tom Holt's best, I'm afraid.
October 10, 2021
Neither one of these stories really landed for me, particularly My Hero. Very confusing and a bit pointless, though amusing enough in its way.
Read
December 14, 2022Hilarious
October 12, 2024
A chucklingly good entertaining read that follows the immortal theme of his previous novels and that, I feel for now, is as much of a good thing as I need for present…
May 2, 2021
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Weak Compendium
October 11, 2010
"The Second Tom Holt Omnibus: My Hero - Who's Afraid of Beowulf?" is another compendium of two of Tom Holt's works. This one contains Who's Afraid of Beowulf? (which I rated at a (marginal) Very Good) and My Hero (which I had to rate as Bad). So, as I usually do with compendium-type works, I take the arithmetic average of the contents and rate this book at an OK 3 stars out of 5. Here are my reviews for the individual works:
- "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?:" I was quite surprised with Tom Holt's "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?" Not for any deep literary reason. But, simply because Beowulf isn't in the book. Outside of the fact that the main characters originate at about the same time and area as Beowulf (and that he's mentioned two or three times in the story), there's no Beowulf here at all. This is entirely different from Holt's modus operandi in his The First Tom Holt Omnibus: Flying Dutch & Faust Among Equals (Tom Holt Omnibus) where, in "Flying Dutch," the story revolves around the Flying Dutchman, and in "Faust Among Equals," it's all about Faust. Regardless of that, the story is well done and interesting. The characters are good, the plot is sound, the modern and historical references are amusing. But, it just lacks the spark or brightness of Holt's other "good" works. I'd actually like to rate this at 3-1/2 stars. But, since I'm forced to go with integers, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and rate it at a Very Good 4 stars out of 5.
- "My Hero:" Holt came up with an interesting concept in "My Hero" (fictional characters having an independent existence). But, he fails in its execution. To get his characters from their problem state over to a satisfactory conclusion, he has them popping from Reality into various works of Fiction (I'm capitalizing those words because Reality and Fiction are dimensions of the universe in the book). There's no problem with that. Unfortunately, instead of choosing the fictional works in some kind of logical, chain-of-event type of manner, he seems to just pop them into the various plots at random. Now, that wouldn't be too bad in a fairly short book. But, my copy (part of his Mightier Than the Sword: Contains Who's Afraid of Beowulf? and My Hero (The Second Tom Holt, Omnibus) ) is 325 pages long. That's just too long for, as another reviewer said in a more positive review, "in-one-door-and-out-the-other chase scenes." After a while, it just becomes boring. Even the length might have been mitigated if he spent the time with some meaty material. But, understandably, this is a Tom Holt book, and that's just not what he does. Instead, he spends the time making fun of the various foibles of authorship and the publishing industry. Again, that just can't support 325 pages of text. So, unfortunately, I have to rate this book at a Bad 2 stars out of 5.
A Weak Compendium
October 11, 2010
"The Second Tom Holt Omnibus: My Hero - Who's Afraid of Beowulf?" is another compendium of two of Tom Holt's works. This one contains Who's Afraid of Beowulf? (which I rated at a (marginal) Very Good) and My Hero (which I had to rate as Bad). So, as I usually do with compendium-type works, I take the arithmetic average of the contents and rate this book at an OK 3 stars out of 5. Here are my reviews for the individual works:
- "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?:" I was quite surprised with Tom Holt's "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?" Not for any deep literary reason. But, simply because Beowulf isn't in the book. Outside of the fact that the main characters originate at about the same time and area as Beowulf (and that he's mentioned two or three times in the story), there's no Beowulf here at all. This is entirely different from Holt's modus operandi in his The First Tom Holt Omnibus: Flying Dutch & Faust Among Equals (Tom Holt Omnibus) where, in "Flying Dutch," the story revolves around the Flying Dutchman, and in "Faust Among Equals," it's all about Faust. Regardless of that, the story is well done and interesting. The characters are good, the plot is sound, the modern and historical references are amusing. But, it just lacks the spark or brightness of Holt's other "good" works. I'd actually like to rate this at 3-1/2 stars. But, since I'm forced to go with integers, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and rate it at a Very Good 4 stars out of 5.
- "My Hero:" Holt came up with an interesting concept in "My Hero" (fictional characters having an independent existence). But, he fails in its execution. To get his characters from their problem state over to a satisfactory conclusion, he has them popping from Reality into various works of Fiction (I'm capitalizing those words because Reality and Fiction are dimensions of the universe in the book). There's no problem with that. Unfortunately, instead of choosing the fictional works in some kind of logical, chain-of-event type of manner, he seems to just pop them into the various plots at random. Now, that wouldn't be too bad in a fairly short book. But, my copy (part of his Mightier Than the Sword: Contains Who's Afraid of Beowulf? and My Hero (The Second Tom Holt, Omnibus) ) is 325 pages long. That's just too long for, as another reviewer said in a more positive review, "in-one-door-and-out-the-other chase scenes." After a while, it just becomes boring. Even the length might have been mitigated if he spent the time with some meaty material. But, understandably, this is a Tom Holt book, and that's just not what he does. Instead, he spends the time making fun of the various foibles of authorship and the publishing industry. Again, that just can't support 325 pages of text. So, unfortunately, I have to rate this book at a Bad 2 stars out of 5.
May 13, 2009
There are some definite parallels between this book and the Thursday Next / Jasper Fforde books. The literary rules that govern the characters, the interplay between Reality and Fiction and the snarky British humor - all things that made me appreciate the book.
In My Hero - the second book in the Omnibus and the one I read - Hamlet is bored with his role, the author, Jane, has writers block and sends her Hero - Regalian - into another book to retrieve a fellow author who has been stuck in a Spaghetti Western for 36 years with his sidekick, an annoyingly talkative gun. As you can imagine, hilarity ensues.
I have to admit that I had a hard time keeping all the ultimately intersecting story lines straight throughout the first half of the book. That might be my fault; maybe I wasn't reading carefully enough. But, persist and they all start to intertwine and sort themselves out. Even at the end though, there were a few parts that I didn't understand the reason for.
I love Holt's style of writing, at least in this book. The purely British parts I had a hard time always grasping, but I love the side conversations that he has with you, the reader, throughout. It's as if you have your own personal, highly sarcastic narrator. I'm definitely going to read more of Tom Holt.
In My Hero - the second book in the Omnibus and the one I read - Hamlet is bored with his role, the author, Jane, has writers block and sends her Hero - Regalian - into another book to retrieve a fellow author who has been stuck in a Spaghetti Western for 36 years with his sidekick, an annoyingly talkative gun. As you can imagine, hilarity ensues.
I have to admit that I had a hard time keeping all the ultimately intersecting story lines straight throughout the first half of the book. That might be my fault; maybe I wasn't reading carefully enough. But, persist and they all start to intertwine and sort themselves out. Even at the end though, there were a few parts that I didn't understand the reason for.
I love Holt's style of writing, at least in this book. The purely British parts I had a hard time always grasping, but I love the side conversations that he has with you, the reader, throughout. It's as if you have your own personal, highly sarcastic narrator. I'm definitely going to read more of Tom Holt.
July 11, 2008
When Vikings awaken from a twelve-hundred year nap in the very first chapter, I'm hooked. What 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.
December 31, 2011
Tom Holt has a very funny way of writing - he had me giggling out loud a couple of times. Well, more than a couple of times.
I liked "My Hero" better than "Who's Afraid of Beowulf". It's very clever thought slightly confusing at times. Perfect travel reading.
I liked "My Hero" better than "Who's Afraid of Beowulf". It's very clever thought slightly confusing at times. Perfect travel reading.
June 25, 2009
Very funny stuff - espeically for the reader and/or writer of fantasy
December 25, 2010
Classic English humor. This fast-paced book will keep you chuckling.
February 12, 2016
I'm an aspiring writer and "Hero" made me see my characters in another light. I really enjoyed this book, it was quick, light and thoroughly enjoyable plus it broadened my thinking.
June 14, 2015
A very funny read. Tom Holt has a refreshing sense of humor.
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