Tall Stories: Contains Expecting Someone Taller and Ye Gods! (Omnibus) [Paperback]

Tom Holt (Author)

Book Description

Series: Omnibus | Publication Date: August 1, 2004

Tall Stories is another omnibus containing two of Tom Holt's beloved comic fantasies. In Expecting Someone Taller, all he did was run over a badger—sad, but hardly catastrophic. But it wasn’t Malcolm fisher’s day, for the badger turned out to be none other than Ingolf, last of the Giants. With his dying breath, Ingolf reluctantly handed to Malcolm two Gifts of Power and made him ruler of the world. But can Malcolm cope with the responsibility? In Ye Gods!, being a hero bothers Jason Derry. It’s easy to get maladjusted when your mom’s a suburban housewife and your dad’s the Supreme Being. It can be a real drag slaying monsters and retrieving golden fleeces from fire-spitting dragons, and then having to tidy your room before you can watch Star Trek. But it’s not the relentless tedium of imperishable glory that finally brings Jason to the end of his rope; it’s something so funny that it’s got to be taken seriously. Deadly seriously.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Holt has a touch that is equally breezy and serious… Hitchhiker’s Guide aficionados will relish every line.” -- Publishers Weekly for Falling Sideways

About the Author

Tom Holt is the author of such comic fantasy classics as: Expecting Someone Taller, Who's Afraid of Beowulf?, Flying Dutch, Ye Gods!, Overtime, Here Comes the Sun, Grailblazers, Faust Among Equals, Odds and Gods, Djinn Rummy, My Hero, Paint Your Dragon and Open Sesame

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841493457
• ISBN-13: 978-1841493459
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #624,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure trove of zany fantasy fiction, March 12, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tall Stories: Contains Expecting Someone Taller and Ye Gods! (Omnibus) (Paperback)

Fans of comic fantasy will relish an omnibus of Tom Holt's zany stories, packing in a treasure trove of zany fantasy fiction. Fans of Douglas Adams will recognize a kindred soul in Holt, whose funny protagonists finds themselves in all manner of strange circumstances. Hilarious and unexpected all the way!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Another Mismatched Set, September 16, 2010

By 

David A. Lessnau (USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tall Stories: Contains Expecting Someone Taller and Ye Gods! (Omnibus) (Paperback)

Just like The First Tom Holt Omnibus: Flying Dutch & Faust Among Equals (Tom Holt Omnibus), this one, "Tall Stories," is a mismatched set. Again, like the "First Tom Holt Omnibus," the first story, Expecting Someone Taller, is very good. While the second story, Ye Gods, is merely OK. As with that other Omnibus, I'm rating this one at the truncated average of the two books: an OK 3 stars out of 5. Below are my individual reviews for each of the books:

- "Expecting Someone Taller:" Having just recently discovered Tom Holt, I'm wondering why he's flown below the radar for so long (as of this writing, the book is almost 2 decades old -- yet, there are only 11 reviews here). "Expecting Someone Taller" doesn't contain the intertwining storylines that his Flying Dutch does. But, the writing is still very good and the ending stays more in character right through to the end. In this book, Holt's working with Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" as a basis of the story. Interestingly, near the beginning, he summarizes Wagner's work so well that I began wishing that I knew of a decent, updated novelization of that opera so I could read it. In this book, the plot is pretty linear. But, the writing is always well-done and humorous. It's also a fairly light read that keeps the reader's interest throughout. So, overall, I rate it at a Very Good 4 stars out of 5.

- "Ye Gods!:" "Ye Gods!" is one of Tom Holt's merely OK stories (this is the fourth of his stories I've read and they're running 50% Very Good and 50% OK). The weakness of the book can be nicely summarized by Holt, himself (this is on pages 310 and 311 of my copy of Tall Stories: Contains Expecting Someone Taller and Ye Gods! (Omnibus) (just after the main character (Jason) meets Prometheus)). Prometheus asks Jason what he thinks of the morality of the situation. With the following ellipses being mine, Jason replies:

"...'Think?' ...'Morality?' Jason's brow furrowed, and he considered long and hard. 'Dunno," he said at last.... 'It's not something I think about a lot... in my line of work. I'm more, you know, blue-collar. Mine not to reason why, that sort of thing.... The way I see it is, somebody somewhere knows what's going on, so who am I to make difficulties?'"

Now, I realize that I don't read Holt for depth. I read him for light, clever humor. But, that exchange is Jason (the main character, mind you) in a nutshell. There's almost nothing in the book about what Jason thinks of anything, why he's doing things, what he wants, etc.. He just reacts to things. Usually, people complain about lack of character DEVELOPMENT in a book. Well, in this case, we don't get any character AT ALL. Essentially, we get a lot of actions and events, but nothing that makes them MEAN anything. To make some modifications to Macbeth:

"... [Jason's] but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage....
...It is a tale...
...full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

That said, the events, actions, and situations in the book are described with Holt's usual good wittiness and technical writing ability. If he had just done the same for the motivations behind them, this would have been another very good book. But, unfortunately, I'll have to rate this at merely an OK 3 stars out of 5.

5.0 out of 5 stars imaginative and funny, November 19, 2008

By 

Mary T. White (las vegas, nv) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tall Stories: Contains Expecting Someone Taller and Ye Gods! (Omnibus) (Paperback)

i first read his stories several decades ago and came upon this combo and i am enjoying them again. he is a quick, funny and inventive storyteller.