Reviewed by: Rachel A Hyde, MyShelf.com
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Tom Holt is almost as much of an institution in the British comic fantasy world as Terry Pratchett, and his tales of the extraordinary paying a visit to the ordinary are the perfect counterpoint to Pratchett's Discworld-based novels. This omnibus has chosen an early Holt story and one of his later ones and have chosen one of my favourites in Beowulf, the story of what happens when modern American archaeologist Hildy Frederiksen digs up a certain burial mound and awakens the last Norse King of Caithness Hrolf Earthstar and his twelve companions from their slumbers. Much hilarity ensues when they try to fit in with the modern world and Hildy has a lot of explaining to do, especially when it is evident that something else has been awakened, too. This is the sort of thing Holt does best of all - show the reader a mundane scene in modern England and then let rip with the invasive fantasy elements. It is a type of humor that can work beautifully as the two poles collide and Holt is a master at it.

In My Hero, fantasy novelist Jane Armitage is more than surprised when two of her main characters start living lives of their own and somehow get tangled up with characters from a Western. This means Jane has to get inside her own novel and ends up finding out what the world of fiction is really like on the inside. There are lots of in-jokes about the world of publishing and, as often happens in Holt's later books, the whole thing takes off and plunges deeply into the realms of the breathlessly satirical, a place of anarchic surreal comedy where nothing is sacred and the more books you have read the more you will laugh. Like Pratchett this sort of thing ought to be available only by prescription.