Snow White and the Seven Samurai

This is my first shot at Tom Holt's work, and I have to say that "Snow White and the Seven Samurai" certainly entertained and delivered on the promised laughs. Also, having an interest in Japanese literature, Holt got my curiosity going in how the heck one can put the Seven Samurai and Snow White in the same story. He did. Rather well, I might add. In the fantasy dream dimension where so many creatures we all know and love live, 3 teen hackers manage to crash the Wicked Queen's MIrrors 3.1 system. This plunges the whole dimension into chaos, with the Big Bag Wolf changing into frogs, and other things. The Three Little Pigs end up with nothing to do, and Snow White turns out to be a scammer who is taking the Seven Samurai for a ride. This is in addition to the rest of the zany people and creatures one finds in Holt's world. Holt is a great writer with a gift for great descriptions and puns. Greatly enjoyed the sardonic wit of many of the characters, such as the Wicked Queen, Dumpy the Dwarf and Julian, Desmond and Eugene, (the 3 Little Pigs). There was a lot of humour, and while most was of the "sniggering" variety, there were occassions when tears came to the eyes. For comic fantasy, and that being an unknown quantity for me, I was impressed with this book from Tom Holt. I will certainly be looking into more of his work.

I have read several of Holt's book prior to reading this (Nothing But Blue Skies, Wish You Were Here, Odds and Gods, and Little People) but this has to be his best. It has just so much going on that you can only read this in small doses. It is just so clever. And funny. Don't forget funny. This guy must be fun to chat with after a few drinks. He just goes here and there and is always looking to make any situation funny. C'mon, Mirrors instead of Windows computer program, Snow White an actual dominatrix type, and don't forget the 3 little pigs. The Big Bad Wolf. Rumplestiltskin. Jack and Jill. Humpty Dumpty. The 3 blind mice. No one is sacred and left alone. The brothers Grimm visiting this land to steal stories, he just covers almost every well known children's story and just has fun with it. I had just as much fun reading this, maybe more. I have bought 2 or 3 copies and given them as gifts. I want others to find humor and laugh like I did. I want whoever is reading this to do the same.

Good stories stay good, even when told a different way. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," for example, we have the fantastical realm, the powerful but fallible beings who transform others, and of course, the ones transformed. And, the steady stream of hilarious asides.Okay, Holt isn't Shakespeare, but he does a good job with the same story elements. Yes, we wake up at the end and find that it was all a dream, or something like that, except that some people don't wake up and just dream on.Not heavy reading, by any means, but it does a nice job filling the gap between Pratchett's releases.

For some reason Tom Holt has never gotten the attention that Terry Pratchett does. They are both comic geniuses, both very solid, imaginative writers, and both manage to be incredibly prolific. Possibly, it is because Pratchett has chosen to set his stories in Discworld, with a regular cast of characters, and Holt starts from scratch each time. But, without question, you can't go wrong with either one. Providing you like to laugh, that is.Somehow three little hackers (disguised as three colorblind mice) slip into the castle of the Wicked Queen and come upon her just as she is running Mirrors 3.1 on her magic mirror. They watch as she runs 'Who_is_fairest.exe and sets an appointment in her calendar for doing away with Snow White. As the queen slips off the hackers attempt to take control of the operating system. No surprise, the pest control software works and the Queen returns in what is almost the nick of time. Unfortunately, the female of the three mice turns the mirror off rather than shutting it down. In this world, Mirrors 3.1 is the real operating system, and it doesn't take well to sudden power losses.In fact, it scrambles everything in memory - which is everything. The Wicked Queen quickly grabs her backup memory bucket (think of it as a 'wet' drive), and heads off into the magic forest to find someone who knows how to pour a full system reload. And so begins the ultimate fractured fairy tale. In it, you will discover that the Three Pigs have resorted to building with concrete and anti-tank weapons. You will meet the wolf that huffs, puffs and says 'rivet.' And find out that Snow White is fond of bondage. You will even get to wonder 'What are these seven samurai doing in a dwarf tale.' What you won't get to do is sit there, read with a grim expression, and not even utter a snicker. Tom Holt is a wizard at the quickly set up, awful pun ("two wrongs don't make us Wrights" and "good fencers make bad neighbors." He has a knack for literary sight gags and the sublimely ridiculous. His books are meant for those times when all the bits refuse to fit together and you just need to think about something else. Or when you want to get somewhat hysterical for a few hours. While this isn't Holt's very best effort (try 'Expecting Someone Taller' or 'Flying Dutch') it is, like all of his work, way better than any of the competition except Pratchett.

I'm not really a fantasy kind of person. But after reading this book, maybe I ought to shift preferences after all. This book is hilarious, funny. It's corny, easily understood by adolescents. His description and the way the whole story just spins around had my brain churning up mental images. Already I've drawn a sketch of the wicked queen. The Big Bad Wolf and his consort the elf is next on the list. Who knows, maybe the whole cast would make an appearance in my sketch book. Every one is entitled to their own opinions. This book, in my opinion, is a perfect read to cheer oneself up when they're days away from major examinations. Stress-reliever. Read it and if you fall outta your chair as I did during Physics, then it's good.