Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
In the best possible sense you do have to wonder what goes in the mind and favoured imagination of Tom Holt when he sits down infront of a computer screen or writing pad, the keystrokes humming away, the faint scratching of the pencil, all giving credence to the most bizarre, the most incredible plots conceivable to be published in the last 50 years.
By using with impunity, a deftness of writing skill and what can only be thought of as every magical potion in the universe he has created some of the best known books in the fantasy genre. From his 1987 debut Expecting Someone Taller, the fantastical Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?, the 1993 novel Here Come The Sun or the superb Snow White and the Seven Samurai, his career has been one of piecing together well-rounded characters in the most absurd situations known to man, woman, Gods, unicorns or dwarfs. Tom Holt continues this look at life several kilter’s off balance in his new book, Doughnut.
The Very, Very large Hadron Collider has blown up and taken with it a very large mountain in Switzerland, on balance not the best day the Swiss would ever have and not something easily repaired with a pen knife. It also starts the events in Theo’s life which sees his arm become invisible, end up as a telephone operator in a hotel that only has two guests and a wine cellar big enough to fill several wine lakes and have to deal with a sister who is only slightly mad and a brother who leaves people in good cheer…when he goes off to somewhere else. Oh yes and at one point being nostalgic about being an abattoir boy.
What Tom Holt has managed to do all throughout his books is to make people laugh, how can you not rise a smile at the thought of A.A. Milne’s Pooh Bear and Tigger being homicidal and trying to kill the young man, or even Mickey Mouse being lauded as a great military hero…perhaps not too much of a stretch to see a cartoon mouse lauded. He also uses the stories he creates to make a world that somehow seems so unbelievably ludicrousness that it actually makes the absurdity of our own world seem even more perplexing and preposterous.
Doughnut yet again captures the reason for escapist humour that Tom Holt is noted for, a story-teller like no other; thankfully, as the world would probably cease to exist in its current default setting if there was anyone doing the same stuff as Tom Holt.
A cracking read, one designed perfectly for cold spring days.
Ian D. Hall