- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Orbit (2 April 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 185723555X
- ISBN-13: 978-1857235555
- Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 13.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,777,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Wish You Were Here
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More About the Author
Product Description
VECTOR
`Tom Holt stands out on his own . . . If you haven't read any, go out and buy one...'
MAIL ON SUNDAY
`Frantically wacky and wilfully confusing . . . gratifyingly clever and very amusing'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
The first of Holt's books I read was "Expecting Someone Taller", which I thought was brilliant. "Only Human" and "Falling Sideways" were enjoyable, if nothing to write home about. Now I've read "Wish You were Here", and I'm going to give up on him - this book was just too disappointing.
The book starts off engagingly, if confusingly, with a number of weird and amusing characters, involved in bonkers and increasingly interwoven plot lines. The plot ticks along very nicely, with great pace and humour... until the middle of the book, when it frankly starts to get tedious. We get a number of further plot developments and new characters which feel like too much of the "same thing" (if you can say that of his surreal plots and characters). I had to really push myself to keep going... until the last few chapters, when Holt appears to have woken up and started writing more engagingly again.
I was pleased that the book looked like finishing on a high - but what a disappointment! I will not give away the ending, but it was utterly uninspired. It was way too easy, requiring absolutely no imagination on the part of the author. Not only is the ending device about the oldest in the book, it did nothing to develop any such meaning or philosophy as the book might have been developing. "Expecting Someone Taller" wasn't just a good, funny read - it actually had something to say. I had the sense that in "Wish you were here" Holt had run out of time (some sort of publishing deadline?) and ideas, and had just thrown something together to get it off his hands.
If you really only like Holt for the comic writing, and aren't worried about the excellence of the plot, much less any deeper meaning, you may well still enjoy this book. But if you're the sort who likes Terry Prachett and Robert Rankin because they write novels that are more than just funny, then you will probably find this book a disappointment.
The book starts off engagingly, if confusingly, with a number of weird and amusing characters, involved in bonkers and increasingly interwoven plot lines. The plot ticks along very nicely, with great pace and humour... until the middle of the book, when it frankly starts to get tedious. We get a number of further plot developments and new characters which feel like too much of the "same thing" (if you can say that of his surreal plots and characters). I had to really push myself to keep going... until the last few chapters, when Holt appears to have woken up and started writing more engagingly again.
I was pleased that the book looked like finishing on a high - but what a disappointment! I will not give away the ending, but it was utterly uninspired. It was way too easy, requiring absolutely no imagination on the part of the author. Not only is the ending device about the oldest in the book, it did nothing to develop any such meaning or philosophy as the book might have been developing. "Expecting Someone Taller" wasn't just a good, funny read - it actually had something to say. I had the sense that in "Wish you were here" Holt had run out of time (some sort of publishing deadline?) and ideas, and had just thrown something together to get it off his hands.
If you really only like Holt for the comic writing, and aren't worried about the excellence of the plot, much less any deeper meaning, you may well still enjoy this book. But if you're the sort who likes Terry Prachett and Robert Rankin because they write novels that are more than just funny, then you will probably find this book a disappointment.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Tom Holt at his best is witty, clever and highly entertaining. At his worst he is prone to wander of in tangents and lose the reader in a more often than not unnecessary plotline. This book luckily falls info the former catagory and is one of his better works in recent years...
Read this book - it is Tom Holt at his finest...
Read this book - it is Tom Holt at his finest...
7 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
If you buy this book in the hope of reading yet another one of Tom Holt's wonderful fantasy novels, you will be very disappointed. He is too busy airing his grievances against Americans and lawyers in this waste of paper and ink to provide the reader with more than a laugh or two. The plot, convoluted as all of his are, manages to be so very dull that it is not worth working out all the twists and turns. The characters are far more annoying than amusing, and it is easy to find oneself wishing them the worst of luck. It is hard to believe the man who wrote something as wonderfully funny as "Flying Dutch" or "Faust Amoung Equals" could have writen the extended whinge labeled "Wish You Were Here."
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