A tragic tale of laughs. ( )

Holt's books while perhaps clever, just aren't funny to me. ( )

A typical Tom Holt book: hilarious and off-the-wall. Not for readers who want a straight-forward plot and story. Holt's story takes a number of devilish turns. One of the characters is a count who has been cursed by having to deliver toys to all the kids in the world one night a year. ( )

This was tedious. Too many characters, no characterization at all to speak of, and the humor was middle-school at best. This isn't to say that it was especially juvenile, more that it wasn't very clever or original.

You might say that Douglas Adams' characterization is shallow, but at least you can differentiate the characters from one another, and besides--Adams had something to say, and a way with words. This has no real thrust, no point, and the prose is largely bland.

It's pretty much just a colossal waste of time. I've read two others by Holt--Who's Afraid of Beowulf? and Flying Dutch, and both were better, but not too much better. I'm beginning to think he's just not a very gifted writer, and needs to take a lot more time working through his stories to make them work as stories first before he tries to make them "funny." ( )

http://www.engel-cox.org/text/grailblazers.html ( )