Snow White and the Seven Samurai [Hardcover]

It makes perfect sense that Snow White should live with seven samurai, once you've got the hang of Tom Holt's latest twisted fantasy comedy. Youngsters from our real world hack into fairyland's Mirrors(TM) operating system--which naturally runs on the wicked queen's magic mirror--and crash it so disastrously that all the stories get tangled. A spaghetti-western Dwarf With No Name (actually he's Dumpy) is hired to save three little pigs from the big bad wolf by recruiting a Magnificent Seven Dwarves' defence team, starting with Rumpelstiltskin and Tom Thumb but going downhill from there. Meanwhile, Fang the wolf has problems with Frog Prince transformations, Snow White learns from her own mirror that she has excellent wicked-queen potential and Baron Frankenstein's latest unholy creation proves to be Pinocchio. We also meet three colour-blind mice, the Beast fleeing in terror from Beauty, an elf who insists she's an "Indigenous Fairylander" and the Grimm Brothers--unconvincingly claiming that they're mere independent observers. After which, things become really complicated and silly, as Storyland is further fragmented by various mirror-users' efforts to gain control, until it seems quite reasonable that one little pig should find himself saying, "I am not a number. I am a free pig." Splendidly deranged entertainment, with quips galore. Holt's in good form. --David Langford

`Frantically wacky and wilfully confusing . . . gratifyingly clever and very amusing'

'Frothy, fast and funny'

'Fast, furious and some good satire'

Once upon a time (or last Thursday, as it's sometimes known) the wicked queen had a fully functioning, if antiquated, Mirrors system and all was well in the kingdom. Then the humans hacked in and the system failed. Fairytales may never be the same again.

Tom Holt is the author of such comic fantasy classics as WHO'S AFRAID OF BEOWULF?, EXPECTING SOMEONE TALLER and OVERTIME.