Falling Sideways [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Falling Sideways is Tom Holt's 19th comic-fantasy romp. For a change it leans (sideways, of course) towards the lunatic fringe of science fiction, with unlikely aliens and cloning techniques at the heart of its demented plot.

Nerdish hero David Perkins falls in love with a girl in a painting, Philippa, who was burned as a witch 400 years ago. By amazing coincidence a lock of her hair comes up for auction. By totally staggering coincidence, David remembers a seedy London shop called HONEST JOHN'S HOUSE OF CLONES. How very, very convenient...

The trouble with the cloned Philippa isn't merely that she comes expensive (Honest John asks remarkably little, but that lock of hair was £15,000). It's that she somehow knows too much about the 21st century and already has a boyfriend who isn't David. Was everything a setup by her alleged father, suspiciously resembling the one-eyed god Odin? And who are all these similar-looking chaps with a missing eye? Attack of the Clones!

David's rollercoaster adventures continue with police arrest for murder, escape after a one-eyed lawyer gives him (a brand-new ploy) a cake hidden in a file, and abduction for sinister experiments aboard what certainly seems to be a UFO. The only logical explanation, of course, is a race of highly evolved, space-travelling frogs.

Further story convolutions are largely indescribable. Key ingredients include frogspawn, dandruff and (the secret of interstellar travel) white sugar. Soon there's more than one Philippa in circulation. Froggy transformations abound. David makes astonishing discoveries about his true identity and enormous family. Libel lawyers advise us not to quote the Microsoft jokes.

Cheerful silliness in the characteristic Holt style. --David Langford

David Perkins is in an art gallery, talking to a seventeenth-century painting. He loves the woman portrayed in it, who was burned as a witch almost 400 years before, and has since he was young. A lock of hair reputed to be hers will be auctioned off later that day, and David must obtain it. For he recently came across an obscure establishment, Honest John's House of Clones, that, upon inquiry, turned out to be exactly what its name implied, and he plans to take advantage of its services. And then he discovers that the place is run by raniform beings--frogs, that is--and everything he has done so far is in accordance with a scheme the frogs hatched back in the seventeenth century. Thereafter, between being wanted for murder and dealing with almost supernatural frogs as well as a baker's dozen clones of Honest John, David has very little time to wonder exactly how his innocent attempt to clone the girl of his dreams got him in so much trouble. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Taschenbuch .

Few would deny that Tom Holt is breathing down the neck of Terry Pratchett when it comes to bestselling comic fantasy. Holt may not possess the manic, surrealistic edge that distinguishes Pratchett's Discworld books, but he offers his own very individual brand of madly logical humour, and such books as Snow White and the Seven Samurai show a comic writer at full stretch. In Falling Sideways, Holt takes on the origins of civilisation. While man's ultimate ascendancy has stretched from the first homo sapiens descending from the trees to nations destroying each other, there is little doubt that humanity is the progenitor of every great civilisation. Wrong. Holt's hero believes he has discovered the real (and hideous) truth: that every great civilisation in history has, rather embarrassingly, been founded, run and then cunningly manipulated by a small gang of devious frogs. Each logical absurdity is piled upon the last with satisfying regularity.

From the moment the first Homo Sapiens descended from the trees, possibly onto their heads, humanity has striven towards civilisation. Fire. The Wheel. Running Away from furry things with more teeth than one might reasonably expect - all are testament to man's ultimate ascendancy. For one man has discovered the hideous truth: that humanity's ascent has been ruthlessly guided by a small gang of devious frogs. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Taschenbuch .

From the moment Homo Sapiens descended from the trees, possibly onto their heads, humanity has striven for civilization. Fire. The Wheel. Running away from furry things with big teeth. All would be testament to man's ascendancy; if one man didn't believe every civilization is actually run by frogs.

Tom Holt is the author of such comic fantasy classics as WHO'S AFRAID OF BEOWULF?, EXPECTING SOMEONE TALLER, OVERTIME, WISH YOU WERE HERE and SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN SAMURAI.