THE MANAGEMENT STYLE OF THE SUPREME BEINGS

RELEASED 22 JUNE 391 pages | Paperback/ebook

Author Tom Holt

Publisher Orbit

God is not dead (sorry, Nietzsche, baby) – but he is retiring, selling his Creation to new management. Humans are now ruled by two corporate brothers, the Venturis, who replace the good/evil thing with a rigorous scheme of “pay as you sin”. (As the book notes, it’s an update of the old church system of “indulgences”, minus the moralising.) The cast includes a woman who’s been laid off a heavenly hotline, a male adventurer who’s suspiciously Spielbergian, and God’s less famous son, who’s tired of being written off as the family loser. Plus there’s a certain ruddy-faced rival god who most of us believed in, once upon a time...

Tom Holt’s latest has passing parallels with the Pratchett/ Gaiman novel Good Omens – especially the use of God’s son Kevin, who plays a comparable role to Adam the Antichrist in the earlier book. Like Good Omens, this is more irreverent than blasphemous, and anyone looking for anti-religious screeds will be disappointed; it’s also a very Judeo-Christian fantasy. But it’s still thoroughly Holt in its benign humour, silliness and outrageous scale. Some of it is wonderful, though the extended comic adventure palls at times, some characters (like Kevin) endear more than others, and the ending is too quick and neat.