Subject: Tom Holt: Ye Gods!

From: [email-masked]
Date: 12 Jun 1994 21:05:19 -0400

Jason Derry is a Hero in the classical style.  The son of Jupiter by a
mortal woman, he slays monsters as a matter of course.  (It can be a real
nuisance when your son keeps coming home from school with dead tigers or
dragons -- particularly if you're running out of room in the back yard to
bury them.)  If he's not remarkably bright, well, he's never needed to be.

The need begins to arise when he encounters Prometheus, chained to a chain
of mountains.  (Don't believe the myth about Hercules having freed him.)
Prometheus is not being punished for bringing fire, except incidentally,
so much for having given humanity the ability to not take the Gods seriously.
Since then the Gods hang out on the sun, playing complicated games and getting
bored.  Prometheus reckons that they (particularly Jupiter, who is a few
planets short of a solar system these days) are a danger to our world, and
has come up with a plan to take care of them.  If the plan fails, the world
will be destroyed, but this is a chance Prometheus is willing to take.

As with most of Holt's novels, the best thing about "Ye Gods!" is the 
premise.  The book never quite lives up to it, though it's often witty and
often cute.  Holt, as is his wont, gets as much mileage as he can from the
humor implicit in placing classical myths in a modern setting, though this
is far from his only source of gags.  Unfortunately, the three-hundred pages
of gags don't seem to add up to one interesting story.  Even compared to
his other books, this one is somewhat tedious.  If you haven't read Tom
Holt's books before, this isn't the best place to start.

	"Right," he said briskly, "this may hurt a little."

	 Nobody knows exactly why doctors say that.  It can't 
	be to set the patient at his ease, becasue anybody
	above the age of three knows from bitter experience
	that the words are the invariable prologue to agony...

%A Holt, Tom
%T Ye Gods!
%I Orbit
%D 1993
%O L4.99 ($6.99 CDN)
%P 296 pp.
%G 1-85723-080-9

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked]   [email-masked]

   "We live and learn, but not the wiser grow" -- John Pomfret