Blonde Bombshell

by Tom Holt

Overview

The year is 2017. Lucy Pavlov is the CEO of PavSoft Industries, home of a revolutionary operating system that every computer in the world runs on. Her personal wealth is immeasurable, her intelligence is unfathomable, and she's been voted 'Most Beautiful Woman' for three years running. To put it simply - she has it all. One thing, however, is not quite right in Lucy's life. She doesn't realize it yet, but she is in fact a bomb. And not just any old bomb. Lucy is a very big, and very smart bomb, and her mission is to blow up the planet known as Earth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781841497778
Publisher:	Orbit Fiction
Publication date:	01/20/2011
Pages:	402
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Tom Holt was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines; interests which led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialized in death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. He lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife and daughter.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Kirkus Reviews

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. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Narrator Ray Sawyer rolls with an eclectic and disparate group of characters who are trying to sort out an intergalactic threat to Earth, providing them with inventive voices and accents. Music from Earth is annoying inhabitants of the planet Ostar so much that they decide to investigate Earth’s defenses in anticipation of blowing it up to make the music stop. Sawyer has fun with the irony and the tongue-in-cheek wordplay between the characters, who range from animals (real and possibly imaginary) to humans and to artificial intelligence that doesn’t know its place. Sawyer keeps the absurdity of the plot under control and delivers a narration that is well paced, lighthearted, and appealing. J.E.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2011 - AudioFile