Ye Gods!

by Tom Holt

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316233408
Publisher:	Orbit
Publication date:	09/04/2012
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	350
Sales rank:	753,470
File size:	906 KB

About the Author

Tom Holt was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines; interests which led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialized in death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. He lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife and daughter.

Editorial Reviews

In Holt's ( Flying Dutch ) latest wacky mythological comedy, the Greek gods have been dethroned by Christianity, ``the Great Leg Pull.'' Apollo, Minerva et al. brood on Mount Olympus, change shape at will, intervene in current human affairs and scheme to take over the world. The plot centers on rebellious, pizza-eating youth Jason Derry, whose father is Jupiter, the Great Sky God, also known as TV repairman Douglas Derry; his mother, fretful, overprotective Phyllis, doesn't realize she's married to a divinity. Although Jason is tired of being a hero, Prometheus is determined to see the boy fulfill his destiny. The god sends an eagle to spy on him; in so doing, the eagle becomes Sharon, the girl next door. When Jupiter resolves to destroy the earth and move his operations to a parallel universe, all heaven breaks loose. Holt unleashes a nonstop barrage of anachronisms, jokes, banter, wisecracks, bathos, outrageous puns and wordplay. Much of this is zany, irreverent fun with a serious underlying intent as Holt turns Plato, Virgil, Freud, Christianity and quantum physics--in short, the whole of the Western tradition--topsy-turvy. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

As the son of Zeus and a suburban housewife, young Jason Derry finds himself increasingly trapped in his role as hero and pawn of an almost-forgotten pantheon of Graeco-Roman gods. The author of Flying Dutch ( LJ 2/15/92) takes aim at the inhabitants of Olympus in his latest comic romp, only narrowly missing the mark as the ingenious premise eventually wears thin. For large fantasy collections only.

Library Journal