Customer Reviews

Saints and Sinners: Contains Paint Your Dragon and Open Sesame (Omnibus)

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If you've ever wondered what happens when you close the covers of your book and if "happily ever after" is permanent, you're about to find out what mischief the characters get up to in their free time.

As any new reader of Tom Holt will soon discover, his wit and sarcasm are splashed upon every page, as evidenced by his use of similes ("Even as a kidnapper he'd [Akram] been no more terrifying than, say, the average car park attendant or pizza delivery man..." pg 596) and his clever symbolism of the constant struggle between good and evil and how a little bit of grey never hurt anyone.

In Open Sesame, fictional characters attempt to break free of the monotony of a storybook and cross the Line between fantasy and reality, only to find that when you try to cheat the book, it bites back.

It's not surprising that Akram the Terrible, the most-feared thief in all of Baghdad, grows tired of his plans being foiled and having his entire life flash in front of his eyes over and over again every time he's killed by the protagonist Ali Baba. In a desperate bid for freedom, he makes a pact with the Godfather and makes a run for the Line. Once on the side of reality, he meets his arch-nemesis in the most improbable of places...An orthodontist's office in Southampton, with a new name: Alistair Barbour. As Akram tries to start over, he meets a motley crew of unlikely friends and foes. Fang, a bloodthirsty fairy, Michelle Partridge, Ali Baba (er, Alistair's) unsuspecting daughter, and John Smith Fingers, a burglar descended from a long line of experts. Akram's quest to turn his life around and become a hero goes delightfully awry as the book begins to give way to chaos in the absence of two of its primary characters. Classic fairytales begin to interfere with each other, with forty of Baghdad's thieves running amok in Snow White's realm. Our colorful cast of characters learns that although it's difficult to go against one's nature, it can be done.

This book is highly recommended for those who are interested in a fun, witty read about finding one's identity despite being stereotyped. My only qualm is that while humor is bearable in small doses, too much of it can be cloying and tiring. Maybe a hint of subtle humor would do Tom Holt some good.

This oddly-named collection reprints two of Holt's mid-90s works, "Paint Your Dragon" and "Open Sesame." They're fair examples of the humor/fantasy genre of an urban-fantasy sort, and they present Holt's coming-and-going kind of humor at (or near) its peak.

"Paint Your Dragon" lets the named dragon reincarnate, for no apparent reason, in a stone effigy created by a modern sculptor - sorry, "sculptress." And, just for narrative convenience, so does St. George. So, the fight is on: good vs. evil, with handful of demons, the world's greatest bounty hunter, and a few other remarkable individuals. And, because this is Holt, the lines separating good from evil don't always surround who you think they should, and don't surround some participants at all.

It turns out that St. George tends to cheat, but that's OK because he's the good guy. It also turns out that the dragon is honest and hardworking, a man (or whatever) of his word. He never intended to wear the black hat in the original story; in truth, it was probably painted in long after the fact.

"Open Sesame" starts with Ali Baba and the forty thieves, as told by a thief - told over and over, as many times as the book has been read, with the same dreary end every time. It turns out that, once he puts his mind to it, that a character can take some control of his role, and even bribe the border guards between Reality and all the rest. Given all of storybook fiction, Holt has plenty of material to work with, including a magic ring that lets you talk to the household gadgetry, a fairy Godfather who grants wishes you can't refuse, the (or a) Tooth Fairy, the story's storyteller, an assortment of thieves (theirs and ours), and multiple personalities for most of them as they commute between worlds. There's lots more, too, to a point that I found a bit much. It's possible that Holt found the multiple characters and story lines a bit much too, since the last part of the narrative broke up into a mob of vignettes flying in close formation.

With over 600 pages of raw thud factor, this and a few specimens of airline food will get you through a trans-Atlantic flight. When you tell other people about them, though, you might get more laughs from the airline food.

-- wiredweird

I liked these two stories, and dragons and genies seem to feature in more of Mr. Holt's later books.