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More Reviews - Tom Holt, Phil Janes, Jerry Della Femina
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My Hero by Tom Holt
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This is the story of how advertising was done in the 50's-60's in the USA.
It's not a wellwritten book, it got a touch of a novel written by an arbitrary high-school kid. But it's quite fun to read, dispite the spelling
errors and the jumping back and forth in the stories.
Well, anyway, they are trapped inside this ship for two weeks, and are going
to be the first humans to meet intelligent life from outer space. That's the
plot...almost. I had heard very little of Phil Janes when I started reading
this book. Something tells me that I will hear a lot more about him later on, this book is a great amusement, Curtis is the most clumsy and inefficient
leader and one can't help but feeling a bit sorry for him. Get away from
reality for a while and read this book and realize that your life could be so much worse, and that you're not completly controlled by artificial life like Arnold..yet.
See also:Expecting Someone Taller by Tom Holt
fantasy/humourous
1987 Orbit
ISBN: 1 85723 181 3
218 pages
This book at Amazon.co.uk: Expecting Someone Taller
This book at Amazon.com: Expecting Someone Taller
Review written on the 31st of March '97
It's for sure that Malcolm didn't intended to run over the poor badger,
but there you are. Imagine his surprise when the Badger turns out to be
Inglof, one of the last Giants. Before Inglof enter the stadium called
definetly-quite-dead-and-not-moving-at-all he, very much reluctantly,
makes Malcolm the ruler of the world.
Malcolm didn't expect this at all, at least not from a badger, or at
least not from a dying badger...
Life is never going to be the same for Malcolm who was used to quite
living, now he's one of the most popular beings in the world, that is,
the Gods don't think his the right bloke for the job, so they try to
convince him to put his responsibilities on someone more suitable.
This was Tom Holt's debut in the comic fantasy genre. Many Gods, Norns,
Dwarves, Valkyries, Giants involved and one gets to learn that the
Wagner didn't have much right about the story of the Tarnhelm.
I read this book over the easter-holiday and I can assure you that it was a very nice way to spend the evenings, not as good as plain sex, but still much
fun.
See Also:
My reviews of Djinn Rummy, Who's Afraid of Beowulf? and My Hero.
The Tom Holt Webpage, the biggest site on the web about this author.
Tom Holt, humourous fantasy, biography & bibliography
fantasy/humourous
1996 Orbit
ISBN: 1 85723 387 5
314 pages
This book at Amazon.co.uk: My Hero
This book at Amazon.com: My Hero
Review written on the 12th of April '97
Jane, the famous fantasy-writer, starts to get funny dreams; an author appears in her dreams and tells her that he has been trapped inside his own books for 36 years and need help to get out of there. Well, of course she feel the urge to help out a fellow author...
And then it all starts, an amazing hunt through all kinds of famous books, and it's bound to be many complications; Piglet getting taken as hostage, Dracula finds himself being taken to hospital to get bloodinjections, Hamlet trying to get out of character and find another role, and other hilarious incidents.
The tempo is very hectic and I had a hard time trying to put the book away, and it occured to me that it was certainly a bad move to start to read this book the week before an exam, well, the only thing to do was to finish the
book before the exam as well. Four and a half piglets out of five for this
great novel.
See Also:
My reviews of Djinn Rummy, Expecting Someone Taller and Who's Afraid of Beowulf?.
The Tom Holt Webpage, the biggest site on the web about this author.
Tom Holt, humourous fantasy, biography & bibliography
From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl
Habor
(Frontline Dispatches from the Advertising War)
by Jerry Della Femina
biography/humourous
Pocket Book edition, published 1971
256 pages
This book at Amazon.com
Review written on the 13th of May '97 
He tells amusing stories about accounts he got/lost or simply just didn't got in touch with. The drawback is that this book was written 1969 and the
author assumes many times that the reader has heard of the agencies and
persons mentioned, well, perhaps they were known at that time, but when I read this book in Sweden 1997, I don't really know who they are.
But, on the other hand, it's not important at all to know who they are, one
just carries on reading and ignores all such comments.
I don't think you'll ever stumble on this book, but if you do, it's at least well worth the 5 SKR I spent (half-an-english-pound).
The Galaxy Game
by Phil Janes
science fiction/humourous
Millenium edition 1994 (copyright Phil Janes 1993)
pages, like 200-250 or something
ISBN: 1 85798 150 2
This book at Amazon.co.uk: The Galaxy Game
Review written on the 20th of June '97
This is the first book in The Galaxy Game-triology, you don't have to read the other two to appreciate this book, since they are almost free-standing. Dick, sorry (he looks like a Dick to me), Richard Curtis is building a
spaceship that will take the first earthlings to where no man (or woman)
had gone before. Such an important mission requires the most skilled and
intelligent astronauts that are specially trained to work together under
tough circumstances. To bad that the crew consists of a bunch of idiots.
Under the command of Curtis, heh! just kidding, under the command of the
humanlike computer named Arnold BUILT by Curtis (sounds much better already?), a computer that are programmed to obey any of the crews wishes, a computer that fast and efficient calculate ways to get out of complications the easiest way. Well, in a perfect world it would be like that, now it's more like: if Arnold is in the right mood and only if he's sure that the crew later will regret it, he is obeying. Hal was a friendly pocket-calculator compared to Arnold.
Read more about other novels in a similar style:
Douglas Adams "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy"
Terry Jones "Douglas Adam's Starship Titanic"
Grant Naylor "Red Dwarf"
Djinn Rummy by Tom Holt
fantasy/humourous
1995 Orbit
277 pages.
ISBN: 1 85723 363 8
This book at Amazon.co.uk: Djinn Rummy
This book at Amazon.com (US): Djinn Rummy
Review written on the 20th of June '97
A genuine genie gets into a lot of trouble when it get's realeased by Jane, a woman that only was trying to commit suicide by eating far to many asprins than any doctor with a degree would recommend. Imagine her surprise when out of the bottle a little genie named Kiss pops out and she suddenly gets three wishes. Imagine Kiss surprise when Jane's first wish is that she wishes twelve million more wishes. Learn more about how genies work, and that there are more of them around than you think. And that not all of them are good...some are even bad. This book is a great one by Tom Holt, not his best but it certainly will make you laugh. Hmm...funny that I always says something like this about every book I read...let's change: Don't read this book..ever! But read all other of Tom Holt's books and then let's see if you can resist reading this as well.
See Also:
My reviews of Who's Afraid of Beowulf?, Expecting Someone Taller and My Hero.
The Tom Holt Webpage, the biggest site on the web about this author.
Tom Holt, humourous fantasy, biography & bibliography
Index of all reviews
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