Customer Reviews

Ye Gods

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"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.

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.

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.

Not a book for someone wanting a deep, thought provoking read. In order to really enjoy this novel, you have to go into it not expecting something spectacularly brilliant. However, the book is light, and filled with dry humor and wit. I highly recomend it for someone who needs a bit more laughter in their reading.

Annalee Skarin was documented some to have "translated into light". She figured out from the Books of Mormon and from the Bible that we are not meant to die, but to conquer aging and death, and then translate into light. There a many verses that interpret well in this context. She translated into light about three months after she was excommunicated from the Mormon Church for her "revealed" writings. She writes in very biblical language and describes, at points, her own relationship to the process and what she felt Jesus was teaching her in her prayers. Although I prefer a more Buddhist approach, there is something wonderful whenever anyone makes their faith work for them and creates positive and loving changes in their lives. It is rare, too, that we hear about any demonstration of such an advanced state of being in our time period. Whether or not she actually translated into light is something each person is going to need to decide for themselves, but if a person wants a tested map about how to translate into light, this just might be the one that speaks to you.

Holt must be in serious debt. Reading "Ye Gods" was equivalent to being forced to watch an emergency crew pull bodies from a wreck. Bad plot (what little there was), bad writing, bad experience all around. I wouldn't recommend this to an enemy.