Little People

Rating:
Summary: It isn't easy being green
Review: Holt's elves aren't what you might have expected - small and green, yes, but different. As it turns out, they weren't supposed to be small, and really don't like it at all.

There's a lot more to it than that - there's an evil baron of commerce who's re-inventing slavery, some very nice people, and young love. Of course, in Holt's world, the niceness becomes an overpowering miasma, sort of like the wall of perfume around that aunt you never liked. Young love, of course, is inept, tongue-tied, and utterly baffled, about the way it is in real life.

If you want a brief, amusing read, this could do the job for you. I found the end a bit abrupt and unsatisfying. I don't read Holt for a final result, though - it's the way he gets you there that's worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Disapointing
Review: I am a big fan of Tom Holt, who writes "intelligent" fantasy in an incredibly funny style. He is best when he sticks to subjects related to mythology (classical, Aurthurian... just about anything, actually) and history, as that is what his background is. This book, on the other hand, felt like a rush job. Parts of it made no sense (even for a book about elves), the characters were one dimensional and trite, and the book dragged on f-o-r-e-v-e-r and should have ended about five times before it actually did.

If you are interested in reading a laugh-out-loud fantasy book by someone who knows his mythology, read "Flying Dutch" or "Expecting Someone Taller" or "Odds and Gods" or anything that has a historical or mythological basis before you form an opinion of Tom Holt. He really does have his brilliant moments: this book, however, is not one of them.

Rating:
Summary: Disapointing
Review: I am a big fan of Tom Holt, who writes "intelligent" fantasy in an incredibly funny style. He is best when he sticks to subjects related to mythology (classical, Aurthurian... just about anything, actually) and history, as that is what his background is. This book, on the other hand, felt like a rush job. Parts of it made no sense (even for a book about elves), the characters were one dimensional and trite, and the book dragged on f-o-r-e-v-e-r and should have ended about five times before it actually did.

If you are interested in reading a laugh-out-loud fantasy book by someone who knows his mythology, read "Flying Dutch" or "Expecting Someone Taller" or "Odds and Gods" or anything that has a historical or mythological basis before you form an opinion of Tom Holt. He really does have his brilliant moments: this book, however, is not one of them.

Rating:
Summary: Save your money - buy Flying Dutch
Review: Save your time and money - this book was a disappointment. I have always enjoyed the Holt books I have read - but Little People was a complete waste of time and money. An interesting idea, that is poorly executed; boring and tedious. Why, when there are so many good Holt books, was this the only one on the shelves of my local Border's.

Rating:
Summary: Little Quality
Review: This book never reaches any great literacy heights. The story is boring and nothing substantial ever really happens. I first thought I was reading about a little girl who encountered elves due to the front cover having a picture of a girl with an elf burger on it. To my surprise the girl just turned out to be an extremely pathetic guy. The story is written as a recount of his experience with him as the third guy. Basically he is a social outcast whose stepfather hates him (understandably) and who has no friends. He sees an elf in his garden one day. His parents want to get rid of him and send him away to a boarding school. There he meets a girl who for some reason becomes his friend but he wants more. He also accidentally kills an elf and encounters a few others. One female one kidnaps him and takes him back to elfland where he is told he is half elf. He must rescue the others from the human world who have been made to work in a shoe factory. Only thing is every time he comes back to the human world he is ten years older. Pathetic book. Do not waste your time.

Rating:
Summary: Little Quality
Review: This book never reaches any great literacy heights. The story is boring and nothing substantial ever really happens. I first thought I was reading about a little girl who encountered elves due to the front cover having a picture of a girl with an elf burger on it. To my surprise the girl just turned out to be an extremely pathetic guy. The story is written as a recount of his experience with him as the third guy. Basically he is a social outcast whose stepfather hates him (understandably) and who has no friends. He sees an elf in his garden one day. His parents want to get rid of him and send him away to a boarding school. There he meets a girl who for some reason becomes his friend but he wants more. He also accidentally kills an elf and encounters a few others. One female one kidnaps him and takes him back to elfland where he is told he is half elf. He must rescue the others from the human world who have been made to work in a shoe factory. Only thing is every time he comes back to the human world he is ten years older. Pathetic book. Do not waste your time.

Rating:
Summary: Take the elves out of Anderson & what do you get?
Review: When it's a story about a little boy who sees an elf at the bottom of the garden, who grows up into a larger sized little kid, still intimidated by his menacing step-dad, and daunted by his own uselessness and general futility of life, we know we are in for another Tom Holt variety show..

With a Darth Vader step-dad and a loony mother, poor Michael doesn't have a great deal of back bone. But that's ok, beacuse his best friend at the mostly-boys-only school is Cruella, and she has attitude in spades.

It seems that Daddy George (the Darth Vader step-dad) has enslaved a whole lot of elves to work in his shoe factory. Altough it takes a lot to get Michael to the point of seeing himself as their saviour, he eventually (and with a lot of prodding from various plot contrivances, and baleful girls, not to mention saccharine elves) makes an attempt to find out and fix whatever his relatives have been up to.

Being who and what he is (a monumental screw up of the kind only teenage and gormless boys seem to acheive), the operation is doomed to failure, a fact he recognizes from the outset.

Slow in places, and at times a little too carried away with describing the interminable boredom in interminable detail, this book is nontheless very enjoyable.

Through reading, I've been moved to push quotes from the book upon people.

Michael is very reminiscent of Prachett's Rincewind, only done in Holt fashion. The spineless acceptance of fate & realization of his place on the food chain make them very similar.

Holt imbues a waft of romance to the book via Cruella, and it's refreshing (The Portable Door has been his other major excursion into "happily ever afters") only I felt at the end of the book he has somewhat betrayed his characters the ending they deserved.

It's as if Holt was happy writing the middle and just before the ending experienced a disappointment that forced him to conclude the book on bitter note, instead of the humorous twist which he usually leaves the reader with.

A poignant paragraph:

"..difference between romance and real life. I think they probably have tupperware hearts in Elfland, thin and bendy and impossible to break, and thus not worth having. This side, we have the real thing; we have all the real things, good and bad, and it's the fact that they can be lost and bruised and broken that makes them valuable. They have all the looks and the style and the flowering cherry trees, we have grotty streets and lousy weather and love that can't be Araldited back together again if you're cack-handed enough to drop it. They have elves who can edit out the bad and boring bits and live for ever; we've just got little people, living short lives, living every second of them, whether we like it or not."

The little people of the title is multi-layered, and not just the obvious reference to elves /gnomes it seems to be at first.

Enjoyable and humorous although a little meandering.

Kotori December 2004 - [e-mail]