Ye Gods! [Mass Market Paperback]

Tom Holt (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Orbit (1994)
• ASIN: B000J33QSQ
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Main Character without Character, September 16, 2010

By 

David A. Lessnau (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ye Gods (Paperback)

"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.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Holt at his best, March 2, 2004

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Ye Gods (Paperback)

This book has everything I look for in Holt. Good fun, literate humor and a plot that won't tax the mind too deeply. It centers on Jason, a nice enough young man. He has a few bad habits, like killing things, and he sometimes wanders off to supernatural realms without leaving a number where he can be reached. Outside of that, he's the kind you might take home to meet your family. Then there's his family ...

Holt manages to sustain a seriously slanted view of a world that very nearly makes sense. If you like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, you may well like this.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ye Gods! What a mythological whirlwind!, November 19, 2003

By 

"mikado1885" (TN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ye Gods (Paperback)

This is one of the bast book I've ever read, and a must for people interested in mythology. A modern tale of an unlikely hero throw into a subversive plot to take over the cosmos. I suppose being the son of Jove dies have its drawbacks. This and "Flying Dutch" make Tom Holt easily my favorite British author.