Customer Reviews

Little People

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I am a big fan of Tom Holt, who writes "intelligent" fantasy in an incredibly funny style. He is best when he sticks to subjects related to mythology (classical, Aurthurian... just about anything, actually) and history, as that is what his background is. This book, on the other hand, felt like a rush job. Parts of it made no sense (even for a book about elves), the characters were one dimensional and trite, and the book dragged on f-o-r-e-v-e-r and should have ended about five times before it actually did.

If you are interested in reading a laugh-out-loud fantasy book by someone who knows his mythology, read "Flying Dutch" or "Expecting Someone Taller" or "Odds and Gods" or anything that has a historical or mythological basis before you form an opinion of Tom Holt. He really does have his brilliant moments: this book, however, is not one of them.

This book never reaches any great literacy heights. The story is boring and nothing substantial ever really happens. I first thought I was reading about a little girl who encountered elves due to the front cover having a picture of a girl with an elf burger on it. To my surprise the girl just turned out to be an extremely pathetic guy. The story is written as a recount of his experience with him as the third guy. Basically he is a social outcast whose stepfather hates him (understandably) and who has no friends. He sees an elf in his garden one day. His parents want to get rid of him and send him away to a boarding school. There he meets a girl who for some reason becomes his friend but he wants more. He also accidentally kills an elf and encounters a few others. One female one kidnaps him and takes him back to elfland where he is told he is half elf. He must rescue the others from the human world who have been made to work in a shoe factory. Only thing is every time he comes back to the human world he is ten years older. Pathetic book. Do not waste your time.

Tom Holt stories are typically more than a bit eccentric and fantastic, with a hefty dash of humor - word play and situations that might be at home in Terry Pratchett (Guards,Guards or Witches Abroad period more than the more-recent novels) or Douglas Adams book - almost always in the displaced-fish-out-of-water mold. Like Pratchett, Holt stories often have a large dose of supernatural or magic in them, but many of them take place in England. Great ingredients for light hearted fun.

This book has some of the best individual lines and a great premise, but the characters aren't as engaging as usual or even likable, and even worse, the ending is flat-out depressing. I found it the least re-readable of his books.

For an introduction to his funner, lighter-escapism with great humor, try Snow White and the Seven Samauri, or Who's Afraid of Beowolf.

Holt's elves aren't what you might have expected - small and green, yes, but different. As it turns out, they weren't supposed to be small, and really don't like it at all.

There's a lot more to it than that - there's an evil baron of commerce who's re-inventing slavery, some very nice people, and young love. Of course, in Holt's world, the niceness becomes an overpowering miasma, sort of like the wall of perfume around that aunt you never liked. Young love, of course, is inept, tongue-tied, and utterly baffled, about the way it is in real life.

If you want a brief, amusing read, this could do the job for you. I found the end a bit abrupt and unsatisfying. I don't read Holt for a final result, though - it's the way he gets you there that's worth reading.

Save your time and money - this book was a disappointment. I have always enjoyed the Holt books I have read - but Little People was a complete waste of time and money. An interesting idea, that is poorly executed; boring and tedious. Why, when there are so many good Holt books, was this the only one on the shelves of my local Border's.

This was the first book by Tom Holt for me. Despite what other people say about him, and despite the playful and interesting premises I THINK I see looking at some of his other books, it's hard to imagine I'll read another one. The main character spends the whole book either being obnoxious himself or (far more of the time) being a punching bag getting abused by his far more obnoxious girlfriend. There's no explanation why he's so in love with a continuously abusive girl, other than that he's a loser (which really is the explanation given, albeit obliquely). The last third of the book is nothing short of grueling to make it through--bitter people banding together for a common goal, but not being nice about it--but you slog on through because you're expecting a payoff. That payoff comes in one of the most abrupt and pointlessly bad endings I can recall. How can I describe it? Ah yes: "Hideous." And the funny thing is how completely, totally, and utterly CONTRIVED the explanation that ending was. Ugh. What a waste of time, for both him and me. It frustrates me that I can't ask him for my money back.

Michael Higgins sees elves. At the age of eight he saw his first one smoking in his family's garden. When he told his step-father about it, the reaction he received was so surprisingly abrupt and alarming that he knew what he had seen was real and that his step-father (the owner of a shoe-making factory - can you say "miniature slave labor force"?) was aware of them.

Tom Holt is a British fantasy author that I feel has way too small of a readership on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. He's written thirty-something humorous fantasy novels yet is still widely unknown here in the States. His books are inventive, smart, and oftentimes, the literary equivalent of a Monty Python sketch.

When it's a story about a little boy who sees an elf at the bottom of the garden, who grows up into a larger sized little kid, still intimidated by his menacing step-dad, and daunted by his own uselessness and general futility of life, we know we are in for another Tom Holt variety show..

With a Darth Vader step-dad and a loony mother, poor Michael doesn't have a great deal of back bone. But that's ok, beacuse his best friend at the mostly-boys-only school is Cruella, and she has attitude in spades.

It seems that Daddy George (the Darth Vader step-dad) has enslaved a whole lot of elves to work in his shoe factory. Altough it takes a lot to get Michael to the point of seeing himself as their saviour, he eventually (and with a lot of prodding from various plot contrivances, and baleful girls, not to mention saccharine elves) makes an attempt to find out and fix whatever his relatives have been up to.

Being who and what he is (a monumental screw up of the kind only teenage and gormless boys seem to acheive), the operation is doomed to failure, a fact he recognizes from the outset.

Slow in places, and at times a little too carried away with describing the interminable boredom in interminable detail, this book is nontheless very enjoyable.

Through reading, I've been moved to push quotes from the book upon people.

Michael is very reminiscent of Prachett's Rincewind, only done in Holt fashion. The spineless acceptance of fate & realization of his place on the food chain make them very similar.

Holt imbues a waft of romance to the book via Cruella, and it's refreshing (The Portable Door has been his other major excursion into "happily ever afters") only I felt at the end of the book he has somewhat betrayed his characters the ending they deserved.

It's as if Holt was happy writing the middle and just before the ending experienced a disappointment that forced him to conclude the book on bitter note, instead of the humorous twist which he usually leaves the reader with.

A poignant paragraph:

"..difference between romance and real life. I think they probably have tupperware hearts in Elfland, thin and bendy and impossible to break, and thus not worth having. This side, we have the real thing; we have all the real things, good and bad, and it's the fact that they can be lost and bruised and broken that makes them valuable. They have all the looks and the style and the flowering cherry trees, we have grotty streets and lousy weather and love that can't be Araldited back together again if you're cack-handed enough to drop it. They have elves who can edit out the bad and boring bits and live for ever; we've just got little people, living short lives, living every second of them, whether we like it or not."

The little people of the title is multi-layered, and not just the obvious reference to elves /gnomes it seems to be at first.

Enjoyable and humorous although a little meandering.

Kotori December 2004 - ojadis@yahoo.com

This book is elfcentric, the first one I've read from Mr. Holt. Still, it's a good, amusing book to read.