Blonde Bombshell

Starred review from April 12, 2010
Driven mad by the “lethally insidious... toxic aural garbage” that is Terran music, the canine inhabitants of the planet Ostar send Mark Two, a bomb so smart it composes violin sonatas, to blow up Earth. Insatiably curious, Mark Two delays its mission, takes human form, and explores Earth to find out why the Mark One bomb vanished. After encountering software revolutionary Lucy Pavlov, a unicorn, two men who probably aren’t werewolves, and drunken corporate stooge George Stetchkin, Mark decides not to complete his mission, precipitating confrontations with a third bomb (named Bob) and the entire Ostar war fleet. Holt, well-known in the U.K. for historical flights of fancy, is set to make a splash in the U.S. with this wickedly funny, take-no-prisoners mashup of love, Armageddon, activists, and one of the universe’s most valuable commodities: octopi.

March 15, 2010
Riotous science-fiction social commentary, from the author of May Contain Traces of Magic (2009, etc.).

In Novosibirsk, genius scientist turned banker George Stetchkin wonders, during his bouts of sobriety, how somebody has removed, without trace, $50 trillion from various bank vaults around the world. Not far away, industrialist Lucy Pavlov ponders why she has no memory of her childhood despite the fact that she's a computer-programming whiz whose products have conquered the world. Meanwhile, in space far above Novosibirsk, Mark Two, an intelligent planet-busting bomb dispatched by Ostar, a world where dogs rule and humans fetch sticks, speculates why its predecessor, Mark One, failed to explode and eliminate the planet as ordered. The Ostar, you see, are so distracted by human pop music that they're practically unable to think. Just as George figures out where the missing money went, two aliens appear and shoot him. Curious about the snippets of Ostar computer code (1,000 years more advanced than human code) embedded in Lucy's programs, the Mark Two—unfortunately, it's clueless about humans—whips up an inconspicuous probe, the human-shaped Mark Twain, who's so weird and geeky he's immediately accepted as a programmer by George's bank. Lucy, however, isn't as easily convinced. While eventually linking all this together, Holt's wicked blasts range far beyond bankers and programmers. What's missing here—and what his often estimable work has always lacked—is a compelling theme, like Discworld or Hitchhiker's Guide.

Tons of wonderful confetti, but the flashbulbs don't pop.

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April 15, 2010
As youd expect from Holt, Blonde Bombshell is rife with puns, complicated setups for ridiculous gags, and a riveting story that is completely implausible. The bare bones of it: signals from Earth are destroying civilization on the planet Ostar. The Ostarians send a bomb to destroy the clear and present threat. When it fails to do the job, they send another, complete with AI, to check on the situation. Of course, they make the classic mistake of sending an AI thats too smart to just follow orders. The Mark Two or, more accurately, the probe it sends to Earth, Mark Twain, cant find the planetary defense network it expected but does find a lot of odd coincidences to occupy itself with, including an unexpected Ostarian presence on Earth. Meanwhile, somebody is stealing vast sums of money, and the only possible means is teleportation. Impossible? Apparently not. Drunk genius mathematician-cum-banker George Stechkin gets caught up in the alien politicking and unexpectedly plays a key role in saving the world. Hilarious and satisfying.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)