In Tom Holt’s Universe

Chapter 352 of Always Read the
Manual Before Assembling Your Cat  

*SPOILER ALERT* DO NOT read if you plan on picking  up this truly fun, weird book!

In the The Good, The Bad and the Smug’s universe, the only truly good character is the king of the goblins, Mordak. The Bad covers, pretty much, everyone else to one degree or another. All the other goblins and dwarves are not only dim as fuck, they’re known to eat their own and everyone else. Carnivores? You betcha, in a red hot second.

The Smug? That’s the elves—every last one of them. They may be the most intelligent, the best (relatively speaking) looking and organized to a fault but they are snide, smug, insufferable motherfuckers.

Does Mister Holt have fairies? Not in this book but when he has, like the elves, they’re intelligent, beyond gorgeous and insufferabley smug and condescending. They lie as easily as they speak and they’re ridiculously huge manipulators of reality. Ya know, sentient sacks of smelly, dressed up Tasmanian Devil shit.

Way to subvert childhood fairy tales. I LIKE it! Humans aren’t necessarily the good guys, they’re just, well, unfortunately human,

In Holt’s multiverse each race has prejudices against the others. HEY, just like real life.

OK, ‘cept for cats—in every universe they’re always good. Maybe. Possibly not when they’re waking you at 1AM for pats and snacks…like this morning.

Back to the good, The Bad and The Smug though—a tasty morsel:

"That’s the thing about thinking. It’s like falling out of a window. Once you start, it’s actually quite hard to stop. The king (of the goblins) furrowed his brow, crumpling it the way tectonic shift once created mountains. After a long, long time he smiled. “At which point.”

“Yes?”

“You start spinning straw for the goblins.”"

Rumpelstiltskin, the infamous straw-spinner, doesn’t actually make an appearance in this book. The straw-to-gold dude is actually one Albert Winkler who, in his own universe (ours) was responsible for the junk bond crisis of the 80s and 90s. Ya know, the one that crashed economies worldwide. Remember? 

What he’s doing in this alternate space is penance. He feels bad. He wants to make amends. He’s trying to guide the dimwitted, idiot, princess-attracting princes away from war with the goblins, dwarves, elves and other humans. He wants the princes to understand how greed-free, solid economic practices will still make the dim princes rich. Huh, good luck to him.

One note. The way you travel from one universe to another is by staring, with great focus. through a doughnut hole. You must concentrate deeply on where and who you want be. Now I'm hungry...glazed blueberry, thenkyewveddy much!

“He believes it’s time to redesign Evil from the ground up; to face the challenges and opportunities of a diverse, rapidly changing society.”
“He’s thinking of calling it,” said Miss Gold, “New Evil.”

He could hear rain pattering on the thatch (roof), like a million mice line-dancing.

The doughnut was definitely looking at him. Hello, sailor, it seemed to be saying. 

Excellent escapism!