Snow White and the Seven Samurai by Tom Holt review

Tom Holt writes humorous fantasy novels. Most use various myths, legends, and fairy tales as their basis. Normally I enjoy them quite a bit, but this one was a bit of a mess.

Three kids hack into an online game. Well, they think it's an online game, but they end up in the castle of the Wicked Queen in a fairy tale world. When the queen comes to investigate the break it, the kids break the queen's magic mirror. Now, this isn't just any magic mirror. It's the Mirrors 3.1 system that runs the kingdom and keeps the fairy tales in order.

Once the system is broken, things get rather out of whack...Snow White no longer lives with seven dwarves, but with seven zen-master samurai. The Big Bad Wolf gets turned into a Handsome Prince. Two of the Three Little Pigs take on the role of the wolf, and blow down the house of the third Little Pig.

The queen and one of the kids embark on a journey to get things fixed, relying on Narrative Patterns to help them out when they need it. Did you ever wonder why there was always an old woman in the forest who could give the hero advice on saving the maiden? Because the story required it. And that's exactly what the Queen is counting on. But it doesn't quite work out, since all of the tales are messed up.

This is really a great concept for the novel, and I enjoyed the play on the various stories and the references to Narrative Pattern. However, the story just went on too long. It seemed as if the author was just throwing in gags to get the story over 300 pages. It's not a bad book, but it's certainly not one of Holt's good ones (like Who's Afraid of Beowulf? for example).


/ [Viking]

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