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The Management Style of the Supreme Beings
What would happen if good and evil were replaced with a more dynamic system based on sound economic principles? Find out in Tom Holt's wickedly funny new comic novel!
When the Supreme Being and his son decide that being supreme isn't for them any more, it's inevitable that things get a bit of a shake-up.
It soon becomes apparent that our new owners, the Venturi brothers, have a very different perspective on all sorts of things. Take Good and Evil, for example. For them, it's an outdated concept that never worked particularly well in the first place.
Unfortunately, the sudden disappearance of right and wrong, while welcomed by some, raises certain concerns amongst those still attached to the previous team's management style.
In particular, there's one of the old gods who didn't move out with the others. A reclusive chap, he lives somewhere up north, and only a handful even believe in him.
But he's watching. And he really does need to know if you've been naughty or nice.
When the Supreme Being and his son decide that being supreme isn't for them any more, it's inevitable that things get a bit of a shake-up.
It soon becomes apparent that our new owners, the Venturi brothers, have a very different perspective on all sorts of things. Take Good and Evil, for example. For them, it's an outdated concept that never worked particularly well in the first place.
Unfortunately, the sudden disappearance of right and wrong, while welcomed by some, raises certain concerns amongst those still attached to the previous team's management style.
In particular, there's one of the old gods who didn't move out with the others. A reclusive chap, he lives somewhere up north, and only a handful even believe in him.
But he's watching. And he really does need to know if you've been naughty or nice.
400 pages, Paperback
First published June 20, 2017
90 people are currently reading
982 people want to read
About the author
Tom Holt
98 books1,174 followersTom Holt (Thomas Charles Louis Holt) is a British novelist.
He was born in London, the son of novelist Hazel Holt, and was educated at Westminster School, Wadham College, Oxford, and The College of Law, London.
Holt's works include mythopoeic novels which parody or take as their theme various aspects of mythology, history or literature and develop them in new and often humorous ways. He has also produced a number of "straight" historical novels writing as Thomas Holt and fantasy novels writing as K.J. Parker.
He was born in London, the son of novelist Hazel Holt, and was educated at Westminster School, Wadham College, Oxford, and The College of Law, London.
Holt's works include mythopoeic novels which parody or take as their theme various aspects of mythology, history or literature and develop them in new and often humorous ways. He has also produced a number of "straight" historical novels writing as Thomas Holt and fantasy novels writing as K.J. Parker.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 157 reviews
July 12, 2019
Q: Crazy as six ferrets in a blender. (с)
Q: No, the point of the messages lay in the subtext: what you see with your peripheral vision, not what you’re focusing on. (c) I'm sure this whole book's like that!
Q: You see, Mr. Lucifer, what we’ve got here is a brand.”
“I know. Lots of them. And red-hot pokers and—” (c)
Q:
“Are you a seagull?”
“Yup.”
“But you can talk.”
“Yup.”
“That’s … unusual.”
“Nope,” said the seagull. (c)
We get the honour to meet Kevin Godson, Dad, Jay, Uncles Ghost and Mike and Nick and Raffa and Gabe … And so much more!
I've no idea what it is that I just read but I can't believe that I've never stumbled upon this before! No matter what else I read, this is still going to be one of the wackiest reads ever!
Warning: no one likes lawyers / bankers in this one!
Q:
Dad, as is tolerably well known, is omnipotent and can do anything. Some things, however, are more difficult than others, even for him; most notably, finding windows in his busy schedule for a little quality time with his dearly beloved son, with whom he is well pleased. On the rare occasions when they can fit it in, they like to go fishing together on Sinderaan, a small yellowy-red planet in the Argolis cluster. (c)
Q:
A light in an upstairs window of the east wing (the house had many mansions) told him that Uncle Ghost was awake, though the chances were that he wouldn’t transubstantiate into anything fit to talk to until much later, after he’d had his coffee and read the papers. (c)
Q:
“Don’t forget,” he said. “One rotation every twenty-four hours.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Six hours of rain in Lithuania, Monday and Thursday morning.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“The keys to the thunderbolt cabinet are on the hook behind the bathroom door; don’t use them unless you absolutely have to.”…
“Just be careful, that’s all. Think about what you’re doing. And no parties.”
“Goodbye, Dad.” (c)
Q:
He’d been quick, but not quick enough to deceive an archangel. (c)
Q:
In the near distance a new galaxy hatched like a fiery egg. He threw a pretzel at it. He missed. (c)
Q:
The mortals say you’re as old as you feel. So how do you feel when you’ve been everywhere and seen everything? The official answer to that was wise, compassionate and understanding. (c)
Q:
Sorry, there’s no one here to hear your prayer right now, please leave your name and we’ll get right back to you. (c)
Q:
Security got back to him about four hours later. Yes, they could absolutely confirm that there had been an unauthorised message. They could also categorically assure him that it had come from either inside or outside the organisation, possibly from one of their own workstations Flipside, or from one of the Topside departments, or the mortal world, or it might be of extradimensional origin. That it might have been malicious in intent was quite definitely one of the hypotheses they were exploring with exceptional vigour, and they firmly anticipated making more enquiries in the short to medium term. They were being careful to rule nothing out at this stage, though of course it would be jumping the gun to make any premature assertions until all the relevant facts were available. They had good reason to suspect that the person who’d done it was very likely the perpetrator, though that wasn’t to say that they’d dismissed the possibility of an accident or a freak random data discharge that just happened to look like a message. Yes, they stood four square behind everything they’d just told him, but maybe it’d be better if he didn’t quote them. Just say, an informed source moderately close to the Security Department …
“Thanks,” he said. “You’ve been a lot of help.” The irony thing again. (c)
Q:
Duties include running the entire Flipside operation practically single-handed (the other hand being tied firmly behind his back), liaising with inefficient section chiefs afflicted with inverse brain/ego ratios, running interference for a boss who’s never here and getting unfairly yelled at. It’s not always a pleasant job—neither is sewer maintenance or sweeping up after the night shift at the slaughterhouse—but this one pays better and you get to sit down most of the time. As long as you know it’s part of the job, you don’t mind, you don’t take it personally.
Do you? (c)
Q:
Fortunately the phone rang again ... Like three quarters of his daily calls, it was somebody asking him why something hadn’t been done yet; the answer, needless to say, being that people kept ringing him for progress reports, severely reducing the time available for making progress. He didn’t say that. He said he’d look into it and get right back. (c)
Q:
“Hello,” the caller said. “I’m ringing to report the imminent collapse of Western civilisation as we know it.”
Lucy stifled a sigh. “Sorry,” she said. “You’ve come through to the out-of-hours helpline, and we only deal with urgent emergencies, whereas Western civilisation has been in irreversible but gradual decline ever since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. ...Thank you ever so much for calling. Bye.” (c)
Q:
She pressed the sticky into the top left-hand corner of her screen, then logged the call on her worksheet; West civ AWKI collapsing, no action; time taken 32 seconds. A pity, really, because it was high time someone did something about Western civilisation, and it was no use leaving anything to the day shift, they were useless. Still, rules are rules. (c)
Q:
“Brilliant. Amazing. You’re an angel.”
“No,” Lucy replied, “I’m the out-of-hours helpline. If you’d like to speak to an angel, I can take your name and number and ask one of my colleagues in Human Affairs to get back to you.” …
Angel. Lucy grinned and shook her head. Good guesses, she thought, but no. I only work here. (c)
Q:
Sinderaan fish exist in five dimensions; unless you play them just right, they can easily slip into the past and refuse to take the bait, or zoom forward into a future where your line snags on a submerged rock. …
The fish was a metempsychotic grayling, three hundred and seventy feet long, with iridescent red and purple scales. Over the centuries the species has produced seventeen of Sinteraan’s greatest physicists and nine of its finest playwrights. They weighed it and threw it back. (c)
Q:
Sinteraan smaltfish had split the atom and proved the existence of the Higgs boson when Earth was still entirely inhabited by plankton, but they still hadn’t figured out that bits of sparkly feather suddenly appearing out of nowhere right in front of their noses were very bad news indeed. (c)
Q:
Didn’t I tell you once, every day in the job ought to feel like the first day—you know, bursting with energy, bubbling over with ideas? (c)
Q:
The balance sheet never lies, Jay boy. (c)
Q:
“Hello? Is that the helpline? Listen, you’ve got to get an engineer over here as quickly as possible. The sun’s just gone out.”
...
“It’s a natural phenomenon,” Lucy said. “It happens from time to time when the Earth’s orbit round the sun happens to coincide—”
“No, no, you stupid child, you’ve got it all wrong. The sun orbits round the Earth. Everybody knows that.”
...
“Silly me,” she said. “Yes, of course it does. What you’re experiencing is a minor exhibition of divine displeasure, caused by someone in your community committing one or more abominations unto the Lord. You can fix it yourself quite easily by sacrificing a goat and rooting out the evildoers among you. Thank—”
“Then why didn’t you say so in the first place? I don’t know, wasting my time with a lot of heretical mumbo-jumbo—” (c)
Q:
“How the Hell can I call this other number if the numbers in the number don’t exist?” (c)
Q:
Perhaps the sort of man who got trapped in pyramids and stole jet fighters might make a pleasant change. (c)
Q:
Why do people do that stuff? he wondered. Then he remembered where he was, and that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a reason for certain sorts of behaviour. Even so. Why couldn’t they go away and hassle the Pentagon or a nice bank or something? (c)
Q:
Kevin had often speculated that if he relaxed any more, he’d drift apart to the point where his molecules no longer collided, and he’d gently evaporate. (c)
Q:
Ominouser and ominouser. (c)
Q:
Cruising the starways, seeing the sights, chilling on multidimensional beaches: what’s not to like? (c)
Q:
He told them all about the Old Gods, and the thousand years they’d spent rounding them up and persuading them to retire to Sunnyvoid, a comfortable and well-appointed retirement home with magnificent views out over the Portals of the Sunset, where they could spend the autumn of their everlasting lives enjoying a wide range of properly structured leisure activities— (c)
Q:
Dad gazed sadly at the deep scratch-marks left by some lawyer’s claws in the polished top of a cherished table, then reflected that it no longer mattered. (c)
Q:
As one of humanity’s great philosophers nearly said, what does God want with a Louis Quinze coffee table, anyway? (c)
Q:
I might go and work for Amazon. They pay slightly better than my last job, and they only think they rule the planet. …
I have a lot of very specialised skills, but my CV would get me locked up for a very long time. (c)
Q:
Don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a nice cosy berth in Number Six than spend my next forty incarnations as a rat. (c)
Q:
How long do you think it would take to convene a meeting of all the heads of state of the one hundred and ninety-six autonomous nation states that make up the political world? Answer: if you’re the Venturi boys, less than a second.
It wasn’t a mass kidnap because they’d been given due notice. In one hundred and ninety-six handsomely appointed offices across the globe a window had opened in thin air, a man in a suit had climbed out and told each of the kings, shahs, presidents and prime ministers that they were required to attend. Each of the leaders thus addressed had got as far as “You must be out of your—” when they found themselves seated at a long table … (c)
Q:
The President of the United States shot to her feet. “I want to protest in the strongest possible terms,” she said, “about this disgraceful tweet tweet tweet.” She then flew three times around the room, spat the sprig of olive out of her beak and perched on the head of the Prime Minister of Tonga.
“She gets that one for free,” Snib said, “as a token of goodwill, but the next interruption will count as blasphemy and will cost your taxpayers ten billion U.S. dollars. If you’d care to resume your place, Madam President, we can get on.”
The white dove fluttered back to her seat. Someone placed a long ruler across the arms so she could perch more comfortably. (c)
Q:
“So, your basic murder will cost you ten million U.S. dollars. Blasphemy is a flat-rate five hundred. Theft is a hundred times the value of the item stolen, same for fraud and embezzlement, only double that if the victims are widows and orphans. Pride is calculated as a multiple of your average yearly income, and we’re doing an introductory special offer on coveting your neighbour’s ox, one thousand dollars. And so on. If you want to sin and you can afford it, please go ahead. We value your custom. Bear in mind though that detection and invoicing will be immediate and unconditional, and we don’t take excuses, justifications or American Express. (c)
Q:
“You’ll find a choice of easy ways to pay on the back, or you may want to consider opening an account with us, entitling you to use our online One-Crime-One-Click option. Have a nice day.” (c)
Q:
He was immortal and immune, and according to the laws of physics prevailing in 99.67 per cent of the Multiverse, he wasn’t there; he was somewhere else. But they ate him anyway. (c)
Q:
To him, bottom lines were what you got if you sunbathed in a bikini. (c)
Q:
During his time Flipside, Bernie had learned tact the way a man falling off a building learns to fly. “People have a mental picture of how they think you ought to look. It’s not quite you, if you see what I mean. …
You’ve got to preserve that idea in their heads, intact, untarnished. What you might call the doctrine of the immaculate preconception.”(c)
Q:
“it’s ghastly,” said the pink-faced man at the British consulate. “Absolutely appalling. It’s getting so that I can’t do my job.”
“Oh?”
“We can’t tell lies any more. Every time we do, some loathsome little man pops up out of thin air and charges us fifty thousand dollars. We’re diplomats. How can we be expected to function under those conditions?” (c)
Q:
I was cradled in the arms of the Almighty—how safe can you get? This thing only stays up because of chemically induced flatulence. … I’m a million miles up in the sky riding in a machine that keeps itself from nosediving into the sea by farting fire, and we’re almost certainly going to die ... (c)
Q:
It wasn’t a movie-star smile, acting on the glands and knee joints, it was your big brother, who’s just looked under the bed and declared it guaranteed free of monsters. Lucy didn’t have a brother, and she’d always wanted to find a monster under her bed so she could bash it senseless with her slipper and take it in to school to show her friends. The only thing in the whole world she was scared of was flying. (c)
Q:
After five years of non-stop action adventure, in the course of which he’d suffered a broken arm, four cracked ribs, multiple concussions, lacerations, burns, gunshot wounds, all manner of fun stuff, not to mention breaking countless laws, stealing aircraft, burgling top-secret government buildings, fighting mano-a-mano with violent men, giving no thought whatsoever to his CV or his pension arrangements and having absolutely no social life—all that, and finally he’d got what he wanted.
A wise man once said that he who attains his ideal by that very act transcends it. Put another way, if the sole purpose of your existence is getting a date with the prettiest girl in the class and she turns out to have bad breath and a laugh like a lemming in a blender, you run the risk of finding yourself in a place where you ask, “What now?” and no answer springs to mind. He’d done it—dreamed the impossible dream, fought the unbeatable foe, made the call and been put through—only to find the very next day that God had sold out to the Venturi boys and everything was suddenly completely different, rendering his colossal achievement meaningless. Oh, and he’d met someone who might well prove to be the girl of his dreams, except he’d been too preoccupied to give the matter proper attention. Which said it all, really. When true love comes bursting in on you like the radiant dawn, and you more or less tell it, Please hold, your call is important to us, it’s a fair bet that something is wrong with this picture. (c)
Q:
“Drifting aimlessly?”...
“It’s not something I’d recommend long term, but now and again it does no harm to go with the flow...” (c)
Q:
We’re doers. Always busy. Improving the shining hour sort of thing. We live for the job. …
In your vocabulary, can’t is the name of a German philosopher as spelt by a greengrocer. No, you gritted your teeth, clenched your fists, got down and did it. And once you’d climbed one mountain, there was the next one facing you…
“Yes. That’s amazing. How did you—?”(c)
Q:
There are three dawns every day on Sinderaan. The first dawn comes up like thunder, drenching the canyons and the towering basalt pillars with red so deep you can practically feel it running down your face. The second dawn, two hours later, is a mellow flood of butter yellow. The third, around primary noon, is a searing, bleaching white heat, spooling threads of white mist off the lakes and rivers. You don’t need to light a campfire on Sinderaan to boil water for your midday coffee. (с)
Q:
a substantial donation changed hands, although some of the hands were fins (c)
Q:
Jay was frying up a mess of snargfish (including four Snobel laureates and a professor of advanced particle physics… (c)
Q:
Jay was a good cook—he could work miracles with a couple of loaves of bread and a few fish… (c)
Q:
A cluster of hieroglyphs in a far corner of the chamber, where the light from the roof was dim so that he could barely make them out, but one of them looked for all the world like a holly leaf. And the one next to it—well, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a plum pudding, except of course it couldn’t be, just as the one next to that one couldn’t possibly be a reindeer, any more than the one next to it could be a sprig of mistletoe. In fact, the only bit he could make out was the writing directly underneath, which said quite clearly (in ancient Akkadian cuneiform), BEWARE, HE WILL RETURN TO THE CITY, unless what looked like a double dot over the final wedge was actually a natural flaw in the rock or a stonemason’s typo, in which case it said, THIS WALL IS TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE. (c)
Q:
A stormtrooper swung the butt of his blaster and hammered it against nothing at all an inch from Bernie’s face. Nothing happened, but it was a bit unnerving. (с)
Q:
The device whirred, bleeped hysterically and blew a fuse. (c)
Q:
“You might care to mention that to your superiors,” he said. “Quite possibly it could help them to make an informed decision.” (c)
Q:
...endless interminable sacrifices—roast goat again; just for once why couldn’t someone slaughter him some nice fresh lettuce and a few spring onions? (c)
Q:
Human politicians, when they’re honest (and you can tell when that is by looking up at the sky and counting the passing pigs)... (c)
Q:
Just one guideline, and make the buggers think for themselves. (c)
Q:
“A degree in Egyptology from Harvard. Postgraduate degrees in pre-Columbian languages, Assyrian archaeology, aeronautical engineering and the theory of explosions. Also diplomas in Sanskrit, Oceanic anthropology and quantum theology.” (c)
Q:
You find the Ark; they stick it in some warehouse. … You find out the secret arcane truths, but you can’t tell anyone because the truth is so wacky nobody sane would believe it. (c)
Q:
When you know the truth, there can, by definition, be no hope. (c)
Q:
He didn’t go quietly. But he went. (c)
Q:
He opened it and started to review the figures, and at some point a yellow highlighter pen must have found its way in between his fingers, and a calculator appeared on the table, probably by magic. Weird stuff like that seemed to happen to him all the time, and he had no idea why. (c)
Q:
I loved working with the sun and the stars. You get the most amazing view from up there. (c)
Q:
“You’re weird,” he said and vanished. (c)
Q:
He picked up the phone and pressed 1 for Security.
“Rocky,” he said cheerfully. “Go buy me an army.” (c)
Q:
According to her application, she felt drawn to the challenge of filing the monthly fuel consumption reports, which she believed would assist in her emotional and spiritual growth as a member of the admin team. Even when she was a little girl, she’d written on the form, she dreamed that one day she’d have her very own filing system, while fuel consumption had been her driving passion for as long as she could remember. (c)
Q:
They have predictive text software in Hell; they also have the people who designed it. (c)
Q:
“You carry your own blindfolding sack?”
“Always. (c)
Q:
“I’m rescuing you,” she said. “That’s different. (c)
Q:
Redemption through joy. Not just the pursuit of happiness but actually catching the bugger. Far as I know, it’s never been tried before. (c)
Q:
I’m definitely going to offer her a job.”
“What sort of a job?”
“Mine, probably. (c)
Q:
That’s immortality for you. Habit-forming. (c)
Q: No, the point of the messages lay in the subtext: what you see with your peripheral vision, not what you’re focusing on. (c) I'm sure this whole book's like that!
Q: You see, Mr. Lucifer, what we’ve got here is a brand.”
“I know. Lots of them. And red-hot pokers and—” (c)
Q:
“Are you a seagull?”
“Yup.”
“But you can talk.”
“Yup.”
“That’s … unusual.”
“Nope,” said the seagull. (c)
We get the honour to meet Kevin Godson, Dad, Jay, Uncles Ghost and Mike and Nick and Raffa and Gabe … And so much more!
I've no idea what it is that I just read but I can't believe that I've never stumbled upon this before! No matter what else I read, this is still going to be one of the wackiest reads ever!
Warning: no one likes lawyers / bankers in this one!
Q:
Dad, as is tolerably well known, is omnipotent and can do anything. Some things, however, are more difficult than others, even for him; most notably, finding windows in his busy schedule for a little quality time with his dearly beloved son, with whom he is well pleased. On the rare occasions when they can fit it in, they like to go fishing together on Sinderaan, a small yellowy-red planet in the Argolis cluster. (c)
Q:
A light in an upstairs window of the east wing (the house had many mansions) told him that Uncle Ghost was awake, though the chances were that he wouldn’t transubstantiate into anything fit to talk to until much later, after he’d had his coffee and read the papers. (c)
Q:
“Don’t forget,” he said. “One rotation every twenty-four hours.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Six hours of rain in Lithuania, Monday and Thursday morning.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“The keys to the thunderbolt cabinet are on the hook behind the bathroom door; don’t use them unless you absolutely have to.”…
“Just be careful, that’s all. Think about what you’re doing. And no parties.”
“Goodbye, Dad.” (c)
Q:
He’d been quick, but not quick enough to deceive an archangel. (c)
Q:
In the near distance a new galaxy hatched like a fiery egg. He threw a pretzel at it. He missed. (c)
Q:
The mortals say you’re as old as you feel. So how do you feel when you’ve been everywhere and seen everything? The official answer to that was wise, compassionate and understanding. (c)
Q:
Sorry, there’s no one here to hear your prayer right now, please leave your name and we’ll get right back to you. (c)
Q:
Security got back to him about four hours later. Yes, they could absolutely confirm that there had been an unauthorised message. They could also categorically assure him that it had come from either inside or outside the organisation, possibly from one of their own workstations Flipside, or from one of the Topside departments, or the mortal world, or it might be of extradimensional origin. That it might have been malicious in intent was quite definitely one of the hypotheses they were exploring with exceptional vigour, and they firmly anticipated making more enquiries in the short to medium term. They were being careful to rule nothing out at this stage, though of course it would be jumping the gun to make any premature assertions until all the relevant facts were available. They had good reason to suspect that the person who’d done it was very likely the perpetrator, though that wasn’t to say that they’d dismissed the possibility of an accident or a freak random data discharge that just happened to look like a message. Yes, they stood four square behind everything they’d just told him, but maybe it’d be better if he didn’t quote them. Just say, an informed source moderately close to the Security Department …
“Thanks,” he said. “You’ve been a lot of help.” The irony thing again. (c)
Q:
Duties include running the entire Flipside operation practically single-handed (the other hand being tied firmly behind his back), liaising with inefficient section chiefs afflicted with inverse brain/ego ratios, running interference for a boss who’s never here and getting unfairly yelled at. It’s not always a pleasant job—neither is sewer maintenance or sweeping up after the night shift at the slaughterhouse—but this one pays better and you get to sit down most of the time. As long as you know it’s part of the job, you don’t mind, you don’t take it personally.
Do you? (c)
Q:
Fortunately the phone rang again ... Like three quarters of his daily calls, it was somebody asking him why something hadn’t been done yet; the answer, needless to say, being that people kept ringing him for progress reports, severely reducing the time available for making progress. He didn’t say that. He said he’d look into it and get right back. (c)
Q:
“Hello,” the caller said. “I’m ringing to report the imminent collapse of Western civilisation as we know it.”
Lucy stifled a sigh. “Sorry,” she said. “You’ve come through to the out-of-hours helpline, and we only deal with urgent emergencies, whereas Western civilisation has been in irreversible but gradual decline ever since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. ...Thank you ever so much for calling. Bye.” (c)
Q:
She pressed the sticky into the top left-hand corner of her screen, then logged the call on her worksheet; West civ AWKI collapsing, no action; time taken 32 seconds. A pity, really, because it was high time someone did something about Western civilisation, and it was no use leaving anything to the day shift, they were useless. Still, rules are rules. (c)
Q:
“Brilliant. Amazing. You’re an angel.”
“No,” Lucy replied, “I’m the out-of-hours helpline. If you’d like to speak to an angel, I can take your name and number and ask one of my colleagues in Human Affairs to get back to you.” …
Angel. Lucy grinned and shook her head. Good guesses, she thought, but no. I only work here. (c)
Q:
Sinderaan fish exist in five dimensions; unless you play them just right, they can easily slip into the past and refuse to take the bait, or zoom forward into a future where your line snags on a submerged rock. …
The fish was a metempsychotic grayling, three hundred and seventy feet long, with iridescent red and purple scales. Over the centuries the species has produced seventeen of Sinteraan’s greatest physicists and nine of its finest playwrights. They weighed it and threw it back. (c)
Q:
Sinteraan smaltfish had split the atom and proved the existence of the Higgs boson when Earth was still entirely inhabited by plankton, but they still hadn’t figured out that bits of sparkly feather suddenly appearing out of nowhere right in front of their noses were very bad news indeed. (c)
Q:
Didn’t I tell you once, every day in the job ought to feel like the first day—you know, bursting with energy, bubbling over with ideas? (c)
Q:
The balance sheet never lies, Jay boy. (c)
Q:
“Hello? Is that the helpline? Listen, you’ve got to get an engineer over here as quickly as possible. The sun’s just gone out.”
...
“It’s a natural phenomenon,” Lucy said. “It happens from time to time when the Earth’s orbit round the sun happens to coincide—”
“No, no, you stupid child, you’ve got it all wrong. The sun orbits round the Earth. Everybody knows that.”
...
“Silly me,” she said. “Yes, of course it does. What you’re experiencing is a minor exhibition of divine displeasure, caused by someone in your community committing one or more abominations unto the Lord. You can fix it yourself quite easily by sacrificing a goat and rooting out the evildoers among you. Thank—”
“Then why didn’t you say so in the first place? I don’t know, wasting my time with a lot of heretical mumbo-jumbo—” (c)
Q:
“How the Hell can I call this other number if the numbers in the number don’t exist?” (c)
Q:
Perhaps the sort of man who got trapped in pyramids and stole jet fighters might make a pleasant change. (c)
Q:
Why do people do that stuff? he wondered. Then he remembered where he was, and that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a reason for certain sorts of behaviour. Even so. Why couldn’t they go away and hassle the Pentagon or a nice bank or something? (c)
Q:
Kevin had often speculated that if he relaxed any more, he’d drift apart to the point where his molecules no longer collided, and he’d gently evaporate. (c)
Q:
Ominouser and ominouser. (c)
Q:
Cruising the starways, seeing the sights, chilling on multidimensional beaches: what’s not to like? (c)
Q:
He told them all about the Old Gods, and the thousand years they’d spent rounding them up and persuading them to retire to Sunnyvoid, a comfortable and well-appointed retirement home with magnificent views out over the Portals of the Sunset, where they could spend the autumn of their everlasting lives enjoying a wide range of properly structured leisure activities— (c)
Q:
Dad gazed sadly at the deep scratch-marks left by some lawyer’s claws in the polished top of a cherished table, then reflected that it no longer mattered. (c)
Q:
As one of humanity’s great philosophers nearly said, what does God want with a Louis Quinze coffee table, anyway? (c)
Q:
I might go and work for Amazon. They pay slightly better than my last job, and they only think they rule the planet. …
I have a lot of very specialised skills, but my CV would get me locked up for a very long time. (c)
Q:
Don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a nice cosy berth in Number Six than spend my next forty incarnations as a rat. (c)
Q:
How long do you think it would take to convene a meeting of all the heads of state of the one hundred and ninety-six autonomous nation states that make up the political world? Answer: if you’re the Venturi boys, less than a second.
It wasn’t a mass kidnap because they’d been given due notice. In one hundred and ninety-six handsomely appointed offices across the globe a window had opened in thin air, a man in a suit had climbed out and told each of the kings, shahs, presidents and prime ministers that they were required to attend. Each of the leaders thus addressed had got as far as “You must be out of your—” when they found themselves seated at a long table … (c)
Q:
The President of the United States shot to her feet. “I want to protest in the strongest possible terms,” she said, “about this disgraceful tweet tweet tweet.” She then flew three times around the room, spat the sprig of olive out of her beak and perched on the head of the Prime Minister of Tonga.
“She gets that one for free,” Snib said, “as a token of goodwill, but the next interruption will count as blasphemy and will cost your taxpayers ten billion U.S. dollars. If you’d care to resume your place, Madam President, we can get on.”
The white dove fluttered back to her seat. Someone placed a long ruler across the arms so she could perch more comfortably. (c)
Q:
“So, your basic murder will cost you ten million U.S. dollars. Blasphemy is a flat-rate five hundred. Theft is a hundred times the value of the item stolen, same for fraud and embezzlement, only double that if the victims are widows and orphans. Pride is calculated as a multiple of your average yearly income, and we’re doing an introductory special offer on coveting your neighbour’s ox, one thousand dollars. And so on. If you want to sin and you can afford it, please go ahead. We value your custom. Bear in mind though that detection and invoicing will be immediate and unconditional, and we don’t take excuses, justifications or American Express. (c)
Q:
“You’ll find a choice of easy ways to pay on the back, or you may want to consider opening an account with us, entitling you to use our online One-Crime-One-Click option. Have a nice day.” (c)
Q:
He was immortal and immune, and according to the laws of physics prevailing in 99.67 per cent of the Multiverse, he wasn’t there; he was somewhere else. But they ate him anyway. (c)
Q:
To him, bottom lines were what you got if you sunbathed in a bikini. (c)
Q:
During his time Flipside, Bernie had learned tact the way a man falling off a building learns to fly. “People have a mental picture of how they think you ought to look. It’s not quite you, if you see what I mean. …
You’ve got to preserve that idea in their heads, intact, untarnished. What you might call the doctrine of the immaculate preconception.”(c)
Q:
“it’s ghastly,” said the pink-faced man at the British consulate. “Absolutely appalling. It’s getting so that I can’t do my job.”
“Oh?”
“We can’t tell lies any more. Every time we do, some loathsome little man pops up out of thin air and charges us fifty thousand dollars. We’re diplomats. How can we be expected to function under those conditions?” (c)
Q:
I was cradled in the arms of the Almighty—how safe can you get? This thing only stays up because of chemically induced flatulence. … I’m a million miles up in the sky riding in a machine that keeps itself from nosediving into the sea by farting fire, and we’re almost certainly going to die ... (c)
Q:
It wasn’t a movie-star smile, acting on the glands and knee joints, it was your big brother, who’s just looked under the bed and declared it guaranteed free of monsters. Lucy didn’t have a brother, and she’d always wanted to find a monster under her bed so she could bash it senseless with her slipper and take it in to school to show her friends. The only thing in the whole world she was scared of was flying. (c)
Q:
After five years of non-stop action adventure, in the course of which he’d suffered a broken arm, four cracked ribs, multiple concussions, lacerations, burns, gunshot wounds, all manner of fun stuff, not to mention breaking countless laws, stealing aircraft, burgling top-secret government buildings, fighting mano-a-mano with violent men, giving no thought whatsoever to his CV or his pension arrangements and having absolutely no social life—all that, and finally he’d got what he wanted.
A wise man once said that he who attains his ideal by that very act transcends it. Put another way, if the sole purpose of your existence is getting a date with the prettiest girl in the class and she turns out to have bad breath and a laugh like a lemming in a blender, you run the risk of finding yourself in a place where you ask, “What now?” and no answer springs to mind. He’d done it—dreamed the impossible dream, fought the unbeatable foe, made the call and been put through—only to find the very next day that God had sold out to the Venturi boys and everything was suddenly completely different, rendering his colossal achievement meaningless. Oh, and he’d met someone who might well prove to be the girl of his dreams, except he’d been too preoccupied to give the matter proper attention. Which said it all, really. When true love comes bursting in on you like the radiant dawn, and you more or less tell it, Please hold, your call is important to us, it’s a fair bet that something is wrong with this picture. (c)
Q:
“Drifting aimlessly?”...
“It’s not something I’d recommend long term, but now and again it does no harm to go with the flow...” (c)
Q:
We’re doers. Always busy. Improving the shining hour sort of thing. We live for the job. …
In your vocabulary, can’t is the name of a German philosopher as spelt by a greengrocer. No, you gritted your teeth, clenched your fists, got down and did it. And once you’d climbed one mountain, there was the next one facing you…
“Yes. That’s amazing. How did you—?”(c)
Q:
There are three dawns every day on Sinderaan. The first dawn comes up like thunder, drenching the canyons and the towering basalt pillars with red so deep you can practically feel it running down your face. The second dawn, two hours later, is a mellow flood of butter yellow. The third, around primary noon, is a searing, bleaching white heat, spooling threads of white mist off the lakes and rivers. You don’t need to light a campfire on Sinderaan to boil water for your midday coffee. (с)
Q:
a substantial donation changed hands, although some of the hands were fins (c)
Q:
Jay was frying up a mess of snargfish (including four Snobel laureates and a professor of advanced particle physics… (c)
Q:
Jay was a good cook—he could work miracles with a couple of loaves of bread and a few fish… (c)
Q:
A cluster of hieroglyphs in a far corner of the chamber, where the light from the roof was dim so that he could barely make them out, but one of them looked for all the world like a holly leaf. And the one next to it—well, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a plum pudding, except of course it couldn’t be, just as the one next to that one couldn’t possibly be a reindeer, any more than the one next to it could be a sprig of mistletoe. In fact, the only bit he could make out was the writing directly underneath, which said quite clearly (in ancient Akkadian cuneiform), BEWARE, HE WILL RETURN TO THE CITY, unless what looked like a double dot over the final wedge was actually a natural flaw in the rock or a stonemason’s typo, in which case it said, THIS WALL IS TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE. (c)
Q:
A stormtrooper swung the butt of his blaster and hammered it against nothing at all an inch from Bernie’s face. Nothing happened, but it was a bit unnerving. (с)
Q:
The device whirred, bleeped hysterically and blew a fuse. (c)
Q:
“You might care to mention that to your superiors,” he said. “Quite possibly it could help them to make an informed decision.” (c)
Q:
...endless interminable sacrifices—roast goat again; just for once why couldn’t someone slaughter him some nice fresh lettuce and a few spring onions? (c)
Q:
Human politicians, when they’re honest (and you can tell when that is by looking up at the sky and counting the passing pigs)... (c)
Q:
Just one guideline, and make the buggers think for themselves. (c)
Q:
“A degree in Egyptology from Harvard. Postgraduate degrees in pre-Columbian languages, Assyrian archaeology, aeronautical engineering and the theory of explosions. Also diplomas in Sanskrit, Oceanic anthropology and quantum theology.” (c)
Q:
You find the Ark; they stick it in some warehouse. … You find out the secret arcane truths, but you can’t tell anyone because the truth is so wacky nobody sane would believe it. (c)
Q:
When you know the truth, there can, by definition, be no hope. (c)
Q:
He didn’t go quietly. But he went. (c)
Q:
He opened it and started to review the figures, and at some point a yellow highlighter pen must have found its way in between his fingers, and a calculator appeared on the table, probably by magic. Weird stuff like that seemed to happen to him all the time, and he had no idea why. (c)
Q:
I loved working with the sun and the stars. You get the most amazing view from up there. (c)
Q:
“You’re weird,” he said and vanished. (c)
Q:
He picked up the phone and pressed 1 for Security.
“Rocky,” he said cheerfully. “Go buy me an army.” (c)
Q:
According to her application, she felt drawn to the challenge of filing the monthly fuel consumption reports, which she believed would assist in her emotional and spiritual growth as a member of the admin team. Even when she was a little girl, she’d written on the form, she dreamed that one day she’d have her very own filing system, while fuel consumption had been her driving passion for as long as she could remember. (c)
Q:
They have predictive text software in Hell; they also have the people who designed it. (c)
Q:
“You carry your own blindfolding sack?”
“Always. (c)
Q:
“I’m rescuing you,” she said. “That’s different. (c)
Q:
Redemption through joy. Not just the pursuit of happiness but actually catching the bugger. Far as I know, it’s never been tried before. (c)
Q:
I’m definitely going to offer her a job.”
“What sort of a job?”
“Mine, probably. (c)
Q:
That’s immortality for you. Habit-forming. (c)
May 13, 2017
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!
This was a very funny surprise. I mean, the title itself is quite droll and I expected a lot of dry sarcasm and satire, but what didn't know could really fill a book. This one, in fact.
I'm so happy I finally got around to reading Tom Holt. I mean, I've seen his name in the bookstores and he's apparently very popular with folks, but I kept skipping right past him, not having a clue.
Well, now I do! Who knew that god and his son and his ne'er-do-well second son were running a business like anyone else, that Old Nick on the flipside is just an employee like anyone else? Or that papa was tired and wanted to sell the business? That the Old Ghost was a doddering old fool messing up our weather?
Delicious. Delightful. So Droll.
And we've got great characters all around. The second son, Kevin, has a good heart, but he never seems to get things right. There's heaven's call center clerks, an Indiana Jones knock-off named Jasper who just hit it big in an ancient tomb that had an 1-800 number, and a ex-walmart employee who picks up the slack in a downsized hell... and this is just the barest beginnings of a setup. Just wait for the story.
(It's a real hoot.)
Suffice to say, a Jolly Old Man plays a very big part in the tale, from scaring the bejesus out of martians to running a private elvish military, and all the while, credit cards are dinging and Hell is now run by Disney.
I'm frankly amazed and amused and I think it's WELL PAST TIME I went ahead and read EVERYTHING by this guy. It's a real pleasure and more than funny... it's even philosophical! :)
Woot!
This was a very funny surprise. I mean, the title itself is quite droll and I expected a lot of dry sarcasm and satire, but what didn't know could really fill a book. This one, in fact.
I'm so happy I finally got around to reading Tom Holt. I mean, I've seen his name in the bookstores and he's apparently very popular with folks, but I kept skipping right past him, not having a clue.
Well, now I do! Who knew that god and his son and his ne'er-do-well second son were running a business like anyone else, that Old Nick on the flipside is just an employee like anyone else? Or that papa was tired and wanted to sell the business? That the Old Ghost was a doddering old fool messing up our weather?
Delicious. Delightful. So Droll.
And we've got great characters all around. The second son, Kevin, has a good heart, but he never seems to get things right. There's heaven's call center clerks, an Indiana Jones knock-off named Jasper who just hit it big in an ancient tomb that had an 1-800 number, and a ex-walmart employee who picks up the slack in a downsized hell... and this is just the barest beginnings of a setup. Just wait for the story.
(It's a real hoot.)
Suffice to say, a Jolly Old Man plays a very big part in the tale, from scaring the bejesus out of martians to running a private elvish military, and all the while, credit cards are dinging and Hell is now run by Disney.
I'm frankly amazed and amused and I think it's WELL PAST TIME I went ahead and read EVERYTHING by this guy. It's a real pleasure and more than funny... it's even philosophical! :)
Woot!
June 25, 2025
A very nicely-done comic fantasy, that suited me all the way through. It’s not the sort of book where a plot summary is going to help much, and with comedy, who knows what will appeal to you. So my recommendation is: read the publisher’s blurb, above. Read Alan’s review, nearby: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Then, read the Kindle sample over at Amazon, which is the first three chapters. If the sample appeals to you -- read the book!
For me, a strong 4-star read. Consistently amusing, with lots of smiles and many chuckles. It’s amazingly silly and consistently good. The best comedy I’ve read in years. Not to be missed, if you are a Tom Holt fan. .
Then, read the Kindle sample over at Amazon, which is the first three chapters. If the sample appeals to you -- read the book!
For me, a strong 4-star read. Consistently amusing, with lots of smiles and many chuckles. It’s amazingly silly and consistently good. The best comedy I’ve read in years. Not to be missed, if you are a Tom Holt fan. .
June 17, 2017
Published on The Nerd Daily | Review by Declan Green
There is a good reason that comedic fiction is not a very common genre – it is devilishly difficult to write without becoming self-gratuitous and unoriginal. Luckily for Tom Holt, he’s right on the mark for his newest comedic science-fiction fantasy novel, The Management Style of the Supreme Beings.
It is a simple premise for a story that is explored imaginatively and humorously. To summarise, God is tired of managing the Earth so he decides to sell the business to the alien family business, the Venturi brothers. With this new management comes a whole new system of justice that does wonders for the economy, crime rate, and world peace. However, despite this, the citizens of Earth are more miserable than ever.
Here, in its sci-fi based, metaphysical dissection of morality and reason, Holt’s novel excels. The story assumes the existence of higher beings and simultaneously treats them with irreverence, effectively humanising them. So as readers we begin to wonder – if morality comes from beings that are just as flawed as us, then why is their moral system any better than our own?
In comes Jersey Thorpe, the archetypal Indiana Jones-type adventurer. In more traditional fiction, this stereotype of the charismatic, hyper-masculine hero has a broad set of skills that help him save the day and win the heart of the love interest. But when this stock character ends up in a story like this one that doesn’t play to traditional conventions, these strengths are comically rendered useless. After all, not every attractive female is a damsel in distress. Not every antagonist is a one-dimensional villain with an overly complex, ineffectual evil scheme.
Sometimes it is the love interest who saves the day, or perhaps the antagonists are merely two misguided brothers trying to look out for each other. Jersey’s naivety to the workings of this world is played to great comedic effect, using the same fish-out-of-water trope that makes The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy so memorable and funny.
This constant subversion of familiar tropes keeps us on edge, as the story takes unpredictable yet still believable twists. Much of this stems from the story’s strange blend of science fiction and fantasy – it is a little bit of both, but does not quite embrace either fully. By referencing these two genres in such unique ways, an ensemble of flat, formulaic characters gradually develop into confident, fully realised individuals.
However, with all this focus on character building, the plot itself starts to get a little messy towards the middle. The subplots take over so much that the main storyline starts to fade into the background. When this main plot becomes the focus once again a little before its resolution, you would be forgiven for flipping back to earlier in the book to try and recall the recent events leading up to this moment.
While the novel could have delivered a little more on its plot development and abrupt resolution, overall it is successful at what it sets out to achieve. The Management Style of the Supreme Beings is genuinely one of the funniest books that I’ve read in recent memory. While it doesn’t reach the heights of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Tom Holt’s knack for characterisation and incorporating philosophy into his story ranges from subtly witty to downright hilarious.
There is a good reason that comedic fiction is not a very common genre – it is devilishly difficult to write without becoming self-gratuitous and unoriginal. Luckily for Tom Holt, he’s right on the mark for his newest comedic science-fiction fantasy novel, The Management Style of the Supreme Beings.
It is a simple premise for a story that is explored imaginatively and humorously. To summarise, God is tired of managing the Earth so he decides to sell the business to the alien family business, the Venturi brothers. With this new management comes a whole new system of justice that does wonders for the economy, crime rate, and world peace. However, despite this, the citizens of Earth are more miserable than ever.
Here, in its sci-fi based, metaphysical dissection of morality and reason, Holt’s novel excels. The story assumes the existence of higher beings and simultaneously treats them with irreverence, effectively humanising them. So as readers we begin to wonder – if morality comes from beings that are just as flawed as us, then why is their moral system any better than our own?
In comes Jersey Thorpe, the archetypal Indiana Jones-type adventurer. In more traditional fiction, this stereotype of the charismatic, hyper-masculine hero has a broad set of skills that help him save the day and win the heart of the love interest. But when this stock character ends up in a story like this one that doesn’t play to traditional conventions, these strengths are comically rendered useless. After all, not every attractive female is a damsel in distress. Not every antagonist is a one-dimensional villain with an overly complex, ineffectual evil scheme.
Sometimes it is the love interest who saves the day, or perhaps the antagonists are merely two misguided brothers trying to look out for each other. Jersey’s naivety to the workings of this world is played to great comedic effect, using the same fish-out-of-water trope that makes The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy so memorable and funny.
This constant subversion of familiar tropes keeps us on edge, as the story takes unpredictable yet still believable twists. Much of this stems from the story’s strange blend of science fiction and fantasy – it is a little bit of both, but does not quite embrace either fully. By referencing these two genres in such unique ways, an ensemble of flat, formulaic characters gradually develop into confident, fully realised individuals.
However, with all this focus on character building, the plot itself starts to get a little messy towards the middle. The subplots take over so much that the main storyline starts to fade into the background. When this main plot becomes the focus once again a little before its resolution, you would be forgiven for flipping back to earlier in the book to try and recall the recent events leading up to this moment.
While the novel could have delivered a little more on its plot development and abrupt resolution, overall it is successful at what it sets out to achieve. The Management Style of the Supreme Beings is genuinely one of the funniest books that I’ve read in recent memory. While it doesn’t reach the heights of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Tom Holt’s knack for characterisation and incorporating philosophy into his story ranges from subtly witty to downright hilarious.
Read
February 12, 2024Santa is the Thunder God, the almighty Allfather and no one wants to mess with Him!
The gods have made a dog's meat of their job and management went down the proverbial drain, so Santa Claus has to step up to put them in their place and things right.
Those who are easily offended, by everything and nothing, will quickly be offended by this book, but readers with less delicate sensibilities can be expectant to spend a good few hours of levity and intelligent humour. Although this is not a religious story, religion - in particular Catholic dogmas - receives a barrage of deliciously accurate criticism, because "The Management Style of Supreme Beings" is pure entertainment from the first word. However, behind all the antics there is more than a simple piece of comedy; it also portrays a sublime reflection of the pseudo-morality of our era.
I read somewhere that Holt's speculations on the Trinity, in the book, are heretical. Exactly why and how I can't say, but they are bound to be heretical, when almost anything you say about the Trinity is so, the arguments of defence are non-existent.
The characters are a motley collection: Satan and his indispensable human sidekick as CEO of Hell, his succubus secretary, a treasure hunter Indiana Jones style, an unemployed Heaven's helpdesk assistant and the supreme Thunder-God, Santa! But who can be up to the all-powerful Venturi brothers?
All characters read like caricatures of pathetic stereotypes: The Venturis came right off Wall Street, and the secretary of Hell is the undervalued but highly competent bureaucrat. The treasure hunter got out of a Holywood "Impossible Mission" franchise, all action and no brains, and the best, with a wink to the ever-present universal misogyny, is the female character that saves the world because brains are better than muscle.
Comic fantasy can be really tricky and most of the time without the visual and audio effects it's resumed to some feeble, mostly displaced, jokes. But there are still a few masters and Tom Holt is certainly one. The book is highly entertaining and guaranteed to make you laugh. It is filled with allusions to, quotes from, misquotes from, and a melee of the Bible - referred to as "the user manual" - contents.
It is a fun hilarious fantasy in the line of the Adams or Pratchett style, but the concept gives plenty of musings on morality, character (or lack of it) and the shortcomings of the human race.
Overall a fun book eminently suitable as a Christmas gift.
Just a QUOTE:
Security got back to him about four hours later. Yes, they could absolutely confirm that there had been an unauthorised message. They could also categorically assure him that it had come from either inside or outside the organisation, possibly from one of their own workstations Flipside, or from one of the Topside departments, or the mortal world, or it might be of extradimensional origin. That it might have been malicious in intent was quite definitely one of the hypotheses they were exploring with exceptional vigour, and they firmly anticipated making more enquiries in the short to medium term. They were being careful to rule nothing out at this stage, though of course it would be jumping the gun to make any premature assertions until all the relevant facts were available. They had good reason to suspect that the person who’d done it was very likely the perpetrator, though that wasn’t to say that they’d dismissed the possibility of an accident or a freak random data discharge that just happened to look like a message. Yes, they stood four square behind everything they’d just told him, but maybe it’d be better if he didn’t quote them. Just say, an informed source moderately close to the Security Department...
PS
Some say we should not despair because there is always Hope. But we better not forget that Hope was in Pandora's box along with all the other plagues and evils of mankind and perhaps it was only distinguished from all others by the slowlness in climbing out...
The gods have made a dog's meat of their job and management went down the proverbial drain, so Santa Claus has to step up to put them in their place and things right.
Those who are easily offended, by everything and nothing, will quickly be offended by this book, but readers with less delicate sensibilities can be expectant to spend a good few hours of levity and intelligent humour. Although this is not a religious story, religion - in particular Catholic dogmas - receives a barrage of deliciously accurate criticism, because "The Management Style of Supreme Beings" is pure entertainment from the first word. However, behind all the antics there is more than a simple piece of comedy; it also portrays a sublime reflection of the pseudo-morality of our era.
I read somewhere that Holt's speculations on the Trinity, in the book, are heretical. Exactly why and how I can't say, but they are bound to be heretical, when almost anything you say about the Trinity is so, the arguments of defence are non-existent.
The characters are a motley collection: Satan and his indispensable human sidekick as CEO of Hell, his succubus secretary, a treasure hunter Indiana Jones style, an unemployed Heaven's helpdesk assistant and the supreme Thunder-God, Santa! But who can be up to the all-powerful Venturi brothers?
All characters read like caricatures of pathetic stereotypes: The Venturis came right off Wall Street, and the secretary of Hell is the undervalued but highly competent bureaucrat. The treasure hunter got out of a Holywood "Impossible Mission" franchise, all action and no brains, and the best, with a wink to the ever-present universal misogyny, is the female character that saves the world because brains are better than muscle.
Comic fantasy can be really tricky and most of the time without the visual and audio effects it's resumed to some feeble, mostly displaced, jokes. But there are still a few masters and Tom Holt is certainly one. The book is highly entertaining and guaranteed to make you laugh. It is filled with allusions to, quotes from, misquotes from, and a melee of the Bible - referred to as "the user manual" - contents.
It is a fun hilarious fantasy in the line of the Adams or Pratchett style, but the concept gives plenty of musings on morality, character (or lack of it) and the shortcomings of the human race.
Overall a fun book eminently suitable as a Christmas gift.
Just a QUOTE:
Security got back to him about four hours later. Yes, they could absolutely confirm that there had been an unauthorised message. They could also categorically assure him that it had come from either inside or outside the organisation, possibly from one of their own workstations Flipside, or from one of the Topside departments, or the mortal world, or it might be of extradimensional origin. That it might have been malicious in intent was quite definitely one of the hypotheses they were exploring with exceptional vigour, and they firmly anticipated making more enquiries in the short to medium term. They were being careful to rule nothing out at this stage, though of course it would be jumping the gun to make any premature assertions until all the relevant facts were available. They had good reason to suspect that the person who’d done it was very likely the perpetrator, though that wasn’t to say that they’d dismissed the possibility of an accident or a freak random data discharge that just happened to look like a message. Yes, they stood four square behind everything they’d just told him, but maybe it’d be better if he didn’t quote them. Just say, an informed source moderately close to the Security Department...
PS
Some say we should not despair because there is always Hope. But we better not forget that Hope was in Pandora's box along with all the other plagues and evils of mankind and perhaps it was only distinguished from all others by the slowlness in climbing out...
August 28, 2017
A very funny satire fantasy novel in the vein of Douglas Adams. My 1st Holt novel and it was what I expected. Cool idea but I felt like it ran out of steam around the 50% mark. Some thought provoking and current issues are brought up, be it religion, culture and believe it or not business administration issues haha. I think it may have helped from a different release date having Santa as a major contributor. Still prefer Mr Adams and Pratchett when it comes to this genre.
June 30, 2017
Probably the only thing worse than a book that tries to be funny and fails is a book you expect to be funny and fails. From the concept and title this seemed like a book with a lot of potential, but it's basically wasted on its one-note idea and execution.
Dad and Jay (the trinity is completed with uncle Ghost) leave for a fishing trip, leaving the earth in charge of the second and lesser-loved son Kevin. On the trip Dad informs Jay that he's decided to sell the divine rule of the earth to the Venturi Brothers. The Venturi Brothers are up-from-nothing divine rulers who have acquired several other properties. They believe that older management styles of good and evil are old-fashioned. Instead, they institute a new income stream. Steal something and a collector suddenly appears to collect the equivalent value in a fine. Commit adultery, same thing.
Dad and Jay go on permanent retirement. Problem is, they weren't completely upright in their contract, which affirmed that there were no other supreme beings on earth ... because only children believe in Santa so he doesn't count.
The humans of earth grumble under this new management concept until some individuals work to recruit Santa into intervening.
It's a concept that wears out quickly, mostly because of pretty banal dialogue and minimal action. As a result it doesn't work well as either a satire on corporations or religion. This isn't a sacrilege or blasphemy issue. I couldn't care less on that account. This is a weak idea stretched into novel length issue.
Dad and Jay (the trinity is completed with uncle Ghost) leave for a fishing trip, leaving the earth in charge of the second and lesser-loved son Kevin. On the trip Dad informs Jay that he's decided to sell the divine rule of the earth to the Venturi Brothers. The Venturi Brothers are up-from-nothing divine rulers who have acquired several other properties. They believe that older management styles of good and evil are old-fashioned. Instead, they institute a new income stream. Steal something and a collector suddenly appears to collect the equivalent value in a fine. Commit adultery, same thing.
Dad and Jay go on permanent retirement. Problem is, they weren't completely upright in their contract, which affirmed that there were no other supreme beings on earth ... because only children believe in Santa so he doesn't count.
The humans of earth grumble under this new management concept until some individuals work to recruit Santa into intervening.
It's a concept that wears out quickly, mostly because of pretty banal dialogue and minimal action. As a result it doesn't work well as either a satire on corporations or religion. This isn't a sacrilege or blasphemy issue. I couldn't care less on that account. This is a weak idea stretched into novel length issue.
November 27, 2017
Absolutely hilarious and great concept. Character’s include God’s other son (Kevin), the older brother Jay (Jesus), Uncle Nick (Satan) and a few other surprises. I was so enthralled with this book that I read it in one day. If you ever wondered what would happen if God decided to retire and sell Earth, Heaven and Hell to a capitalist crazed set of twin aliens then this is the book for you. Just loved it.
May 8, 2017
https://koeur.wordpress.com/2017/05/0...
Publisher: Orbit
Publishing Date: June 2017
ISBN: 9780316270823
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4.9/5
Publishers Description: When the Supreme Being and his son decide that being supreme isn’t for them any more, it’s inevitable that things get a bit of a shake-up. It soon becomes apparent that our new owners, the Venturi brothers, have a very different perspective on all sorts of things. Take Good and Evil, for example. For them, it’s an outdated concept that never worked particularly well in the first place.
Review: Wow. One of the best reads I have had in a long time. Funny, acerbic, poignant and relevant to life, it is at once Hitchhiker-esque in approach and Still Life in regard. There is so much going on that any attempt to define any one thing that was best about it is impossible. The characters have a great depth of character and develop wonderfully with the movement. All the disparate pieces of the story line slowly converge into one for a raucous ending that perhaps lends substance to the as yet defined humanistic desire for a familial archetype.
The writing is crazy good and coupled with the social commentary, makes for a novel you can’t put down. GET THIS!
Publisher: Orbit
Publishing Date: June 2017
ISBN: 9780316270823
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4.9/5
Publishers Description: When the Supreme Being and his son decide that being supreme isn’t for them any more, it’s inevitable that things get a bit of a shake-up. It soon becomes apparent that our new owners, the Venturi brothers, have a very different perspective on all sorts of things. Take Good and Evil, for example. For them, it’s an outdated concept that never worked particularly well in the first place.
Review: Wow. One of the best reads I have had in a long time. Funny, acerbic, poignant and relevant to life, it is at once Hitchhiker-esque in approach and Still Life in regard. There is so much going on that any attempt to define any one thing that was best about it is impossible. The characters have a great depth of character and develop wonderfully with the movement. All the disparate pieces of the story line slowly converge into one for a raucous ending that perhaps lends substance to the as yet defined humanistic desire for a familial archetype.
The writing is crazy good and coupled with the social commentary, makes for a novel you can’t put down. GET THIS!
July 27, 2017
Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy:
If you are looking for a book that satirizes religion without getting too damn dark, THE MANAGEMENT STYLE OF THE SUPREME BEINGS is perfect for you. It makes you think without drowning the reader in morality. It is such a fun read that the 400 pages fly by.
Our hero is Jersey Thorpe, an Indiana Jones type character who is a bit full of himself but quite good at discovering the biggest secrets left behind by previous civilizations. Unfortunately for him, the question of “is there a God?” is answered pretty clearly when God sells the planet to the Venturi brothers, who value money over actual right and wrong. They don’t want your soul, they just want your checkbook.
This book has a great HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY vibe, with just enough nonsense and planet hopping to keep things interesting. Despite the uncertainty and silliness, there is never confusion, and I never had to re-read in order to figure out how we had gotten where we were.
This book is timely and fun, with characters that range from hyper-intelligent fish to God himself, and everything in between. THE MANAGEMENT STYLE OF THE SUPREME BEINGS is easily the funniest book I’ve read all year.
If you are looking for a book that satirizes religion without getting too damn dark, THE MANAGEMENT STYLE OF THE SUPREME BEINGS is perfect for you. It makes you think without drowning the reader in morality. It is such a fun read that the 400 pages fly by.
Our hero is Jersey Thorpe, an Indiana Jones type character who is a bit full of himself but quite good at discovering the biggest secrets left behind by previous civilizations. Unfortunately for him, the question of “is there a God?” is answered pretty clearly when God sells the planet to the Venturi brothers, who value money over actual right and wrong. They don’t want your soul, they just want your checkbook.
This book has a great HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY vibe, with just enough nonsense and planet hopping to keep things interesting. Despite the uncertainty and silliness, there is never confusion, and I never had to re-read in order to figure out how we had gotten where we were.
This book is timely and fun, with characters that range from hyper-intelligent fish to God himself, and everything in between. THE MANAGEMENT STYLE OF THE SUPREME BEINGS is easily the funniest book I’ve read all year.
April 29, 2018
"Ho, ho, ho?" Then he grinned, ear to ear. "He's back,"
* * *
3 / 5
When I first laid eyes upon the cover of The Management Style of the Supreme Beings, I thought it was one of those slightly weird self-help books. You know the kind, the Seven Habits of the Highly Effective Worker, or How To Get Rich Quick, and Sell Your Soul To The Devil That Is Capitalism kind of book. Obviously, this is intentional, and the content of The Management Style of the Supreme Beings is every bit as weird as its cover.
He could hear music. It might have been a chorus of angels inside his head, but it was probably the phone playing Vivaldi. It didn't matter. He was through. Please hold, the voice repeated. LIke a man with his fingertips hooked over the threshold of Heaven, he held
We have a varied cast of characters ranging from God and Jay and God’s second and lesser son Kevin, to Jersey the well-mocked Indiana Jones archetype, to Bernie who runs Hell when ol’ Lucifer just wants a day off. With respect to female characters we have Jenny, who I didn’t really understand but I think she’s a robot, and Lucy, who works the godly Helpline.
In terms of plot, let me set the scene: we have Earth, functioning as usual under the hand of God, who having vanquished all the lesser gods (except for one…) and ruled for millennia, decides that he’s getting a bit too old for this nonsense. What he really wants to do is retire and go fishing for multi-dimensional fish with his son; so he puts Earth up for sale and who snaps it up but the Venturi brothers? The moment the papers are signed and sealed and a dubious legal promise is made, Good and Evil are thrown out the window in favour of a monetised system.
BEHOLD, HE COMPILES A CATALOGUE. TWICE HE PERUSES IT. SURELY HE WILL IN DUE COURSE ASCERTAIN THE VIRTUOUS ONE AND THE EVILDOER.
I’ve never really read anything like The Management Style of the Supreme Beings, so it’s wacky and mishmash plot was novel and funny, but as the book went on it did feel too drawn-out, with about 100 pages to go, and the ridiculousness of it stopped being funny. It also didn’t feel focused enough; I assume the main “point of the book was to provide some gentle religious critique, but it was also trying to uproot and overturn common adventure film clichés – like action girl sidekick becomes man’s “prize” at end – and our typical conceptions of Santa. It was all too muddled, like we were swimming around in the author’s thoughts of “could do this, oh wait, could do that, oh my isn’t that a great idea”.
I also wasn’t particularly impressed by the ending. It wasn’t clever or subversive or even satisfying; I had lots of questions like what happened to Jenny? What happened to Hell as an amusement park? Holt had loads of great ideas that I would have loved the book to tie up but it just sort of ended. I will definitely read more of Holt’s books, probably by borrowing them from the library, because it was amusing and refreshing.
Read this review and more on my blog: https://atlasrisingbooks.wordpress.co...
* * *
3 / 5
When I first laid eyes upon the cover of The Management Style of the Supreme Beings, I thought it was one of those slightly weird self-help books. You know the kind, the Seven Habits of the Highly Effective Worker, or How To Get Rich Quick, and Sell Your Soul To The Devil That Is Capitalism kind of book. Obviously, this is intentional, and the content of The Management Style of the Supreme Beings is every bit as weird as its cover.
He could hear music. It might have been a chorus of angels inside his head, but it was probably the phone playing Vivaldi. It didn't matter. He was through. Please hold, the voice repeated. LIke a man with his fingertips hooked over the threshold of Heaven, he held
We have a varied cast of characters ranging from God and Jay and God’s second and lesser son Kevin, to Jersey the well-mocked Indiana Jones archetype, to Bernie who runs Hell when ol’ Lucifer just wants a day off. With respect to female characters we have Jenny, who I didn’t really understand but I think she’s a robot, and Lucy, who works the godly Helpline.
In terms of plot, let me set the scene: we have Earth, functioning as usual under the hand of God, who having vanquished all the lesser gods (except for one…) and ruled for millennia, decides that he’s getting a bit too old for this nonsense. What he really wants to do is retire and go fishing for multi-dimensional fish with his son; so he puts Earth up for sale and who snaps it up but the Venturi brothers? The moment the papers are signed and sealed and a dubious legal promise is made, Good and Evil are thrown out the window in favour of a monetised system.
BEHOLD, HE COMPILES A CATALOGUE. TWICE HE PERUSES IT. SURELY HE WILL IN DUE COURSE ASCERTAIN THE VIRTUOUS ONE AND THE EVILDOER.
I’ve never really read anything like The Management Style of the Supreme Beings, so it’s wacky and mishmash plot was novel and funny, but as the book went on it did feel too drawn-out, with about 100 pages to go, and the ridiculousness of it stopped being funny. It also didn’t feel focused enough; I assume the main “point of the book was to provide some gentle religious critique, but it was also trying to uproot and overturn common adventure film clichés – like action girl sidekick becomes man’s “prize” at end – and our typical conceptions of Santa. It was all too muddled, like we were swimming around in the author’s thoughts of “could do this, oh wait, could do that, oh my isn’t that a great idea”.
I also wasn’t particularly impressed by the ending. It wasn’t clever or subversive or even satisfying; I had lots of questions like what happened to Jenny? What happened to Hell as an amusement park? Holt had loads of great ideas that I would have loved the book to tie up but it just sort of ended. I will definitely read more of Holt’s books, probably by borrowing them from the library, because it was amusing and refreshing.
Read this review and more on my blog: https://atlasrisingbooks.wordpress.co...
October 10, 2017
Eat of the fruit of any tree in the garden but not this one was a trap, sure as God made little green apples.I was just saying, not all that long ago, that Tom Holt is reliable—that you really know what you're getting with one of his novels. "Like slipping into a warm bath," is what I said back in 2016. And that's still true. The Management Style of the Supreme Beings is most definitely a Tom Holt book. But even so this one's a departure of sorts—we're not dealing with vampires and werewolves, alien frogs or mystical doughnuts here. This book tackles a much bigger topic. The biggest. You know: God. The Supreme Being, Creator of Heaven and Earth. And His son Jay. And His other son, Kevin.
—p.315 (emphasis added)
Yeah, Kevin. No, not that Kevin, not at all, though we do need to talk about this one too. See, Kevin gets left behind (heh) when God, Jay and the Holy Spirit sell off their Creation and are required to vacate the premises. Kevin—along with all of humanity, of course—has been left to the tender mercies of Ab and Snib, the rapacious Venturi Brothers, whose plan to run the Earth promises at least to be a lot more... modern than the previous management's. So even though Kevin's always been rather feckless, the fate of the Earth may now be down to him. And you remember what happened the last time one of His sons went slumming...
A guy comes along. He heals the sick, criticises the wealthy and suggests that we all be nice to each other, and so the Romans string him up. And the moral? Well, you didn't have to be a genius, did you? And that, judging by the results over the intervening centuries, had been the lesson they'd taken to heart. Screw the sick, suck up to the rich, stomp on your neighbour and you'll avoid the gallows. Just common sense, really.
—p.153
You may have read something like this before, at least in synopsis. Christopher Moore has written a couple. I've even dabbled in the same pond myself. But this is a Tom Holt novel, and he does go veering off in directions I would never have anticipated. When God eventually regrets his decision (He can do that, you know; there is Biblical precedent), He gains a most unexpected ally. And no, it's not good old Uncle Nick—Mr. Lucifer, to you, already has his hands full trying to keep Flipside out of bankruptcy—and I haven't even mentioned Lucy, who runs the out-of-hours helpline for the Almighty (and who may be the strongest character in the book, despite never being given a surname), or Jersey Thorpe, the professional
There's a lot going on in The Management Style of the Supreme Beings, is what I'm saying, even beyond Tom Holt's usual madcap fare... and that is what elevates this book, more than I'd expected, maybe even into the realm of the—heh—sublime...
February 7, 2019
You've met them. You may have to sit at the same table with one at large family gatherings: those people who insist that the world would be a better place if only everything was run like a for-profit business. Well, has Tom Holt got a Dickensian fantasy for them, complete with a ghost.
Imagine that God gets a little weary of the daily grind, and decides to sell the family business so he can travel, and do more fishing. He and Jay (his first begotten son, in whom he is well pleased) take off to enjoy retirement. Kevin (God's second begotten son, in whom he is substantially less pleased) takes his chances on Earth. Who does God sell out to? The Venturi Brothers, who immediately abolish the whole, messy good and evil business in favor of something more straightforward-- and profitable. Want to bludgeon your boss to death? Go for it! But it will cost you 7 figures. If you can't afford that, take advantage of the Venturi Corp's easy finance plan, with 30 years of monthly payments at a very fair interest rate.
Everyone has to go along with the plan, because there's no other choice. Don't pay the fine, and you end up in the Marshalsea, the Venturi Brothers' new prison. No one has the power or resources to fight back... with the exception of one ancient, underestimated thunder god. Whether you know him as a jolly old man who distributes toys, or The Red Lord, Santa Claus is coming to town. You better watch out.
I would have been happy if Holt had focused solely on the reprehensible (yet perfectly legal) behavior of corporations, along with the gentle tweaks of religion in general. But he also throws in an Indiana Jones-style adventure story if you insist on a conventional plot to go along with your metaphysics.
Sample humor: One staff member in hell wears a t-shirt with this legend-- “I fought the Lord, and the Lord won.”
My favorite line: “Hell had predictive text technology. It also had the people who invented it.”
This was a joy to read, and seemed tailor-made to hit all my happy buttons. If you enjoy comic fantasy, this is a must-read.
February 28, 2019
Writers of comic novels all seem to go through a phase where they begin to prefer what Terry Pratchett called "the joy of plot" over simply telling jokes. Some stave this off like Alan Dean Foster by splitting their time between their comedy and more serious works such as film novelisations; others, like Pratchett or Adams, find a way of blending plot and comedy in a glorious synthesis. Christopher Brookmyre simply turned away from the genre. And then there are some, like Tom Holt, who seem to come to the view if they think the central idea is funny then the jokes don't matter so much. For the last decade or so, therefore, Holt has found comedy in bureaucracy and corporatism, from recasting the Elves and the Shoemaker as a story about sweat shops to, as here, exploring a corporate buyout of creation.
God, bored after millenia managing the Earth, has sold out to the Venturi Corporation and gone fishing with his son, Jay. His second, less well-regarded son, Kevin remains behind, unwilling to abandon the human race to a company who believes you can use financial incentives to deal with sin. And he's not alone: adventurer Jersey isn't prepared to accept the takeover either. When Jersey finds there's a potential ally in Santa Claus, he sets out to find the red god and save the world.
Unfortunately, that's about all there is to it. The book might be relatively chubby for a work of comic fiction, but the plot is both surprisingly thin and - towards the end - somewhat rushed. Partially this is because there are so many side characters that nobody really does much, but mostly it's because what the primary characters do isn't that interesting or engaging. Kevin, potentially the most interesting character in the novel, does have an arc, but it's not particularly fleshed out. The remaining cast are more-or-less one-dimensional and this, taken with the lack of laugh out loud lines (the few jokes generally feel forced), makes this a particularly weak example of the genre.
God, bored after millenia managing the Earth, has sold out to the Venturi Corporation and gone fishing with his son, Jay. His second, less well-regarded son, Kevin remains behind, unwilling to abandon the human race to a company who believes you can use financial incentives to deal with sin. And he's not alone: adventurer Jersey isn't prepared to accept the takeover either. When Jersey finds there's a potential ally in Santa Claus, he sets out to find the red god and save the world.
Unfortunately, that's about all there is to it. The book might be relatively chubby for a work of comic fiction, but the plot is both surprisingly thin and - towards the end - somewhat rushed. Partially this is because there are so many side characters that nobody really does much, but mostly it's because what the primary characters do isn't that interesting or engaging. Kevin, potentially the most interesting character in the novel, does have an arc, but it's not particularly fleshed out. The remaining cast are more-or-less one-dimensional and this, taken with the lack of laugh out loud lines (the few jokes generally feel forced), makes this a particularly weak example of the genre.
June 19, 2017
Tom Holt does it again! With his signature dry wit and observational satire, Tom Holt's latest book is a wonderfully clever story about creation myths and the beings that run them. There are many original and exciting aspects about this universe to love, but my favorite one is the idea that the business of creation is exactly that: a business.
It all begins when God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) takes the cosmic businessgods the Venturi Brothers up on their offer to buy his Creation, with an eye spent to an eternity of retirement fishing. The Venturis do things a little differently though: sin is now permissible in the new belief system, provided you can pay the hefty fines. Right and wrong no longer really matter, if your pockets are deep enough. Hell, excluded from the bargain, becomes a tourist destination a la Disneyland. Kevin, God's other son, decides to renounce godhood and live among the humans. And up in the North Pole, a god we all believed in at one point is coming to town.
So many things about this story demonstrate Holt's original and highly self-aware way of seeing the world. One of his characters is a larger-than-life but smaller-than-average Indiana Jones type hero, who struggles with the new regime and a love interest who refuses to be reduced to the function of hero's sidekick. Their discussion of all the tropes of the adventure genre were some of my favorite scenes.
My one quibble with this story would be that it seems to end too early, with an ending that almost seems like a letdown after everything. Tom Holt created a world that I would have happily stayed in longer, but I suppose all good things must come to an end.
*My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!
It all begins when God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) takes the cosmic businessgods the Venturi Brothers up on their offer to buy his Creation, with an eye spent to an eternity of retirement fishing. The Venturis do things a little differently though: sin is now permissible in the new belief system, provided you can pay the hefty fines. Right and wrong no longer really matter, if your pockets are deep enough. Hell, excluded from the bargain, becomes a tourist destination a la Disneyland. Kevin, God's other son, decides to renounce godhood and live among the humans. And up in the North Pole, a god we all believed in at one point is coming to town.
So many things about this story demonstrate Holt's original and highly self-aware way of seeing the world. One of his characters is a larger-than-life but smaller-than-average Indiana Jones type hero, who struggles with the new regime and a love interest who refuses to be reduced to the function of hero's sidekick. Their discussion of all the tropes of the adventure genre were some of my favorite scenes.
My one quibble with this story would be that it seems to end too early, with an ending that almost seems like a letdown after everything. Tom Holt created a world that I would have happily stayed in longer, but I suppose all good things must come to an end.
*My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!
December 23, 2020
Although absolutely nothing about the cover design or back blurb suggests it, this is a Christmas book!
And it's a funny one!!!
I've loved what I've been able to find of Holt's older comic novels (he's hard to get here!) but I haven't read much of his new work.
I'm going to borrow the same comparison I recently used for Jasper Fforde's Early Riser (my review) versus his past work: it's a different humour, more world-weary and resigned. The smirky, eye-rolling, flinch-inducing humour of The Office instead of the full on laugh-tracked sitcoms of the past.
So while it feels more restrained than his older works, and I didn't laugh out loud, there is still so much to enjoy here!
When God decides to retire, his eldest son Jay (yes, that J) accompanies him on a universe-spanning fishing trip. But his youngest son Kevin - the black sheep and little known failure of the family who loves nerdy stuff like humanity and computers - refuses to go, and descends from Heaven to Earth to live among the mortals he's read about.
The new Supreme Beings, the business-minded Venturi brothers, decide to do away with the old Good versus Evil nonsense, and repurpose the angels as "infraction agents", who instantly appear to charge anyone who commits a sin. But once nothing is off limits (as long as you can afford it, because if you can't, you end up in stasis in a special jail) people just aren't happy, even though everything looks wonderful on paper.
All the old gods and goddesses of the past were long ago put out to pasture in a special secured nursing home where they can't cause trouble. No one is left to challenge the Venturi brothers. No one, that is, except someone everyone has forgotten was once a god - a big, jolly fellow in a bright red suit 🎅
It's up to him, and a confused Kevin - with assistance from a retired "Indiana Jones" style adventurer, an ex-celestial call center employee, Lucifer's best accountant and an immortal succubus who just wants a normal life - to Save the World (As We Knew It).
Clever, sly, snarky and utterly delightful! So glad I accidentally read it at the right time of year 😁 Will definitely be looking for more of Holt's books in the future!
And it's a funny one!!!
I've loved what I've been able to find of Holt's older comic novels (he's hard to get here!) but I haven't read much of his new work.
I'm going to borrow the same comparison I recently used for Jasper Fforde's Early Riser (my review) versus his past work: it's a different humour, more world-weary and resigned. The smirky, eye-rolling, flinch-inducing humour of The Office instead of the full on laugh-tracked sitcoms of the past.
So while it feels more restrained than his older works, and I didn't laugh out loud, there is still so much to enjoy here!
When God decides to retire, his eldest son Jay (yes, that J) accompanies him on a universe-spanning fishing trip. But his youngest son Kevin - the black sheep and little known failure of the family who loves nerdy stuff like humanity and computers - refuses to go, and descends from Heaven to Earth to live among the mortals he's read about.
The new Supreme Beings, the business-minded Venturi brothers, decide to do away with the old Good versus Evil nonsense, and repurpose the angels as "infraction agents", who instantly appear to charge anyone who commits a sin. But once nothing is off limits (as long as you can afford it, because if you can't, you end up in stasis in a special jail) people just aren't happy, even though everything looks wonderful on paper.
All the old gods and goddesses of the past were long ago put out to pasture in a special secured nursing home where they can't cause trouble. No one is left to challenge the Venturi brothers. No one, that is, except someone everyone has forgotten was once a god - a big, jolly fellow in a bright red suit 🎅
It's up to him, and a confused Kevin - with assistance from a retired "Indiana Jones" style adventurer, an ex-celestial call center employee, Lucifer's best accountant and an immortal succubus who just wants a normal life - to Save the World (As We Knew It).
Clever, sly, snarky and utterly delightful! So glad I accidentally read it at the right time of year 😁 Will definitely be looking for more of Holt's books in the future!
April 2, 2021
At first glance of the cover I thought this was one of those self-help type books. In fact it is a fantasy comedy where it's very difficult to explain the plot.
God and his son Jay sell the Earth to some corporate gods, leaving God's other son, Kevin to wander the earth.
There are some other characters, Nick who runs hell, Father Christmas and an India Jones type person, Jersey. It's a book that doesn't take itself seriously. The humour is similar to Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Terry Pratchett and there is enough to keep the reader interested.
One flaw is that every character no matter their situation is very pragmatic something that didn't seem to fit with the world Holt has created.
Still the author did come up with a different way to tackle good and evil in this new world.
God and his son Jay sell the Earth to some corporate gods, leaving God's other son, Kevin to wander the earth.
There are some other characters, Nick who runs hell, Father Christmas and an India Jones type person, Jersey. It's a book that doesn't take itself seriously. The humour is similar to Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Terry Pratchett and there is enough to keep the reader interested.
One flaw is that every character no matter their situation is very pragmatic something that didn't seem to fit with the world Holt has created.
Still the author did come up with a different way to tackle good and evil in this new world.
October 6, 2017
God, I love Tom Holt!
February 6, 2018
Actual rating: 3.5/5
February 25, 2020
God tires of managing Earth and sells it off to the Venturi Brothers who bring in their free market system of morality. A genuinely clever and funny play on human morality and how we view right and wrong.
April 11, 2023
Unexpected pleasure. This is religion in a way I can understand. Such a great take on God(s).
December 29, 2023
this book is very silly but has very serious things to say, strongly recommend if you want something to lighten up your shelf that still delivers a punch
November 24, 2024
Great book!
Funny, odd, heart warming, I bought it in an Australian airport to get to grips with Australian fiction.
Gutted such a good book was actually written by a bloke in London.
Funny, odd, heart warming, I bought it in an Australian airport to get to grips with Australian fiction.
Gutted such a good book was actually written by a bloke in London.
May 1, 2020
The premise was fun, but the whole thing was hokey. Out of about a dozen named characters there were only two women: a sex object and a secretary. Both were props. Not impressed.
July 25, 2022
Promising title and start, but like almost all Tom Holt books I read so far, rather thin after all.
July 1, 2017
Well, I love Tom Holt, but this was not one of his best. It has all the trademark jokes, puns etc. on every page, but it just seemed a little too simple in its plot and story. Usually, Holt is way wackier than this. As usual, he takes aim at giant corporations like Amazon, governments, lawyers, religion, generally anything that is overinflated.
And as usual, dopey guy meets crabby, but savvy girl and mostly through her the day is saved. Unfortunately, there is not that much of her in this book as she spends most of her time in prison where she seems to be tossed just to get her out of the way.
I was afraid Holt would stop writing these funny books since he seems to have more success as KJ Parker writing sword and sorcery type novels. But at the same time, it seems that he might just be thrashing out book after book and not really spending enough time on them to make them great.
So alas, just a medium effort from Holt. I hope he comes up better next time.
For first time Holt readers, I would recommend The Portable Door or anything in that series or Paint Your Dragon.
And as usual, dopey guy meets crabby, but savvy girl and mostly through her the day is saved. Unfortunately, there is not that much of her in this book as she spends most of her time in prison where she seems to be tossed just to get her out of the way.
I was afraid Holt would stop writing these funny books since he seems to have more success as KJ Parker writing sword and sorcery type novels. But at the same time, it seems that he might just be thrashing out book after book and not really spending enough time on them to make them great.
So alas, just a medium effort from Holt. I hope he comes up better next time.
For first time Holt readers, I would recommend The Portable Door or anything in that series or Paint Your Dragon.
August 14, 2017
I fell in love with Tom Holt's fantasies long ago. They were a special treat from Britain, and I would look for his books whenever I was in London, back before Amazon. Seemed like there were always new ones I hadn't seen, which had come out since my last trip. Now, his books are available in the US... they're even here in my local library! We are SO lucky! Tom's recent books hadn't resonated as much for me, but this one really is classic Tom Holt, in my opinion. Just nailed it. Hilarious situations. Cutting social commentary. Dad and Jay decide to sell off the Earth and retire... and Kevin, the younger son, has to decide what to do. An Indiana Jones-type hero, whose path has unexpected twists. And an unlikely... villain? Savior? Gods have very human failings and feelings here. This is the sort of book that I love reading parts of out loud to my wife, and they are still funny out of context. If you like Douglas Adams and haven't read Tom Holt yet, I highly recommend this book.
July 21, 2019
The Supreme Being and his son decide they've had enough of managing Earth and sell it to an alien pair of brothers. The new management gets rid of pesky "good and evil" notions.Misdeeds (according to new management) are simply punished by fines. But that doesn't actually make people happier.
This is good satire - with many funny secondary characters, like an Indiana Jones knockoff and a human who assists with managing Hell - and kind of likes it there.
People who liked Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy will probably like this. It's that kind of science fiction/satire.
And, it'd make a good gift for people who say "why can't schools/government offices be run like a business. That'd solve everything!"
This is good satire - with many funny secondary characters, like an Indiana Jones knockoff and a human who assists with managing Hell - and kind of likes it there.
People who liked Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy will probably like this. It's that kind of science fiction/satire.
And, it'd make a good gift for people who say "why can't schools/government offices be run like a business. That'd solve everything!"
August 22, 2019
This book is so much fun! I had a chuckle on nearly every page. The humor is clever and sometimes took some thought, to the point where I'd be making dinner or something and thinking about the book and something would click and I'd laugh. Beyond the humor, it gave me some interesting ideas to chew over about good and evil and Christianity in general. Great, great stuff.
I didn't enjoy the first Tom Holt book I read (couldn't finish it, in fact), but this one was charming and fun and I'm glad I gave it a chance. Holt's writing, at least for this book, is on par with Douglas Adams, IMO.
I didn't enjoy the first Tom Holt book I read (couldn't finish it, in fact), but this one was charming and fun and I'm glad I gave it a chance. Holt's writing, at least for this book, is on par with Douglas Adams, IMO.
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