Falling Sideways

Tom Holt

Average Rating 7/10 (1 Review)

From the moment 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 supremacy.

It is a noble story, a triumph of intelligence over adversity and so, of course, complete and utter fiction.

For one man has discovered the hideous truth: that humanity's ascent has been ruthlessly guided by a small gang of devious frogs.

Frogs that rule the Universe.

The man's name is David Perkins and his theory is not, on the whole, widely admired, particularly not by the frogs themselves who had, frankly, invested a great deal of time and effort in keeping the whole thing quiet.

Happily for humanity, however, very little of the above is actually true either.

Unhappily, things are a lot, lot worse.

Review by Nigel (010402) Rating (7/10)

Review by Nigel
Rating 7/10
I didn't really do Tom Holts new novel justice as I read it over a particularly busy week so didn't get the usual run at it... and believe me it's not the kind of novel you want to read 10 pages at a time.

David Perkins has fallen in love... with a painting, or rather the girl in a painting, one Philippa Levens, a 17th Century witch burned at the stake by some not very nice people. Unknown to David is that all this is connected with frogs, cloning and the divine being... several of which are knocking about at one time or another (basic clone problem really:).

Falling Down starts off very well with classic Holt humour that definitely sees him back on form (see Nothing but Blue Skies Review). The latter part of the book, however, gets rather surreal and complex and left me with a feeling that I didn't know if the latest in a long line of weird explanations would be true or not, even when it turned out it was.

All-in-all very good... and remember, be kind to frogs.
Nigel (1st April 2002)