The Thomas Holt who wrote Meadowland is the same person as the Tom Holt whose humorous mythical books, like Who’s Afraid of Beowulf and Expecting Someone Taller, I’ve praised before in this space.
The same wit is in evidence in Meadowland, his 2005 novel about the Viking discovery of America, but all in all it’s a very different kind of book.
The narrator is John Stetathus, a eunuch and accountant in the service of the emperor of Constantinople in the year 1036. He is commanded to accompany a shipment of gold through Greece to Sicily, along with three members of the emperor’s personal army, the famous Varangian Guard, made up mostly of Norsemen. One of the guards is a large and rather dull young man called Harald Sigurdson, whom Viking buffs will immediately recognize as the future King Harald Hardrada of Norway. The other two are Kari and Eyvind, a pair of elderly Icelanders. Continue reading Meadowland, by Thomas Holt
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Flying Dutch, by Tom Holt
A couple of my friends are Tom Holt fiends, and they’ve contrived to place in my hands three of his best novels (I reviewed the other two here). Flying Dutch is another offering in his original idiom (to quote, appropriately, Sir Lancelot in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”), the legend-based farce. (He’s moved into actual historical fiction with his more recent novel Meadowlands, a story of Vikings in America which I haven’t read yet.)
As you may have guessed, this is the story of the Flying Dutchman. In legend, the Flying Dutchman is a sea captain who cursed God, and so was condemned to sail the seas forever, allowed to visit shore only once every seven years, until some condition (true love, in Wagner’s opera) is fulfilled.
Holt’s version is slightly different. The Dutchman, Cornelius Vanderdecker, is indeed immortal, along with his crew, and only gets shore leave once in seven years, but the reason is somewhat more prosaic (I won’t spoil it for you). His story gets entwined with that of Jane Doland, an English accountant who stumbles onto the financial complications that naturally result from owning a still-in-force, three century old insurance policy.
As she investigates, and eventually gets to know the Dutchman herself, the true story is gradually revealed. We encounter among other elements alchemy, an immortal cat, and the meddling of a television producer who has figured in other Holt novels.
Once again, I felt that Holt’s writing resembled nothing so much as P.G. Wodehouse’s. Holt isn’t as great a genius as The Master, but he can be very funny, and the plots are similar—a colorful cast of characters, many of them none too bright, meaning well and crossing one another in multiple boneheaded ways. There’s a hint of politics, with some mild criticism of the United States, and the conventional assumption that nuclear power is purely evil, but you’re not intended to take any of it seriously. The ending is satisfying, if off-center.
No offensive elements that I recall. Recommended, if you can find a copy (it’s out of print, sadly).