Imprint
- Orbit
- Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
A hilarious comic fantasy novel from the most inventive writer in the field.
As everyone knows, when great warriors die their reward is eternal life in Odin's great hall - otherwise known as Valhalla.
But Valhalla has changed. It's grown. It's diversified. Just like any corporation, the Valhalla Group has had to adapt to survive.
Unfortunately, nothing could have prepared it for the arrival of Carol Kortright, one-time cocktail waitress, currently dead, and not at all happy.
Sparkling comic fantasy from one of Britain's sharpest, funniest writers.
More information on this book and others can be found on the Orbit web-site at www.orbitbooks.co.uk
Praise for Valhalla
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'Rewriting the classic gods for comic effect is a Tom Holt speciality, and Valhalla returns to Odin the Skyfather, much mistreated in Holt's first funny fantasy Expecting Someone Taller 1987). Valhalla is the afterlife where warriors forever feast, get drunk, laugh at each other and are reborn the next day--the Viking idea of fun. But Odin, a devious bastard, has made changes ...
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For Howard the pretend Viking, who joined the War-Band of Sigurd Bloodtooth (Smethwick chapter) in hope of pulling girls, Valhalla is a gory shoot-up with modern weapons. For older killers like Attila, Napoleon and Hitler it's like the thrilling suspense of watching paint dry. For Lin Kortright, theatrical agent to the gods, it's endless gruelling auditions for the part of Lin Kortright--every time, he "dies" on stage. Carol the cocktail waitress lands in a similar dead-end job as a serving wench in the traditional Valhalla, where there's a special briefing for Americans:
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Skyfather, his message: You in Kansas any more are not.
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Indeed Odin gives everyone personalised Valhallas that nastily twist their own wish-fulfilment dreams. Clever one-liners and bizarre ideas come thick and fast as ever--few people suspected that the "voices" heard by Joan of Arc included police radios and Fairy Liquid ads. But Holt's emphasis on death and afterlife makes Valhalla a darker than usual comedy. There are manic chases aplenty, but can anyone escape Odin forever? Carol at least intends to have fun trying. Wild humour with a bracing touch of grimness.' - David Langford, Amazon.co.uk
Tom Holt
Tom Holt was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines. These interests led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialised in death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. He lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife and daughter. He also writes as K. J. Parker.
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