Expecting Someone Taller (Tom Holt, 1987)

Looking for something short and light to take on holiday to Copenhagen earlier this week, I selected Tom Holt's debut novel, which at 218 pages is significantly shorter than the last fiction I read. I read quite a few of Holt's fantasy-comedies during my teenage years, and it's therefore been a while since I read anything as funny and surreal. I knew this was the book I wanted for my holiday when I picked it off the bookshelf and read the opening paragraph, wherein Malcolm Fisher runs over a badger, and the badger expresses annoyance.

It turns out that the badger, who turns into an old, bearded man, was the guardian of a ring that allows the wearer to control the world, along with a nifty helmet-like device that allows a person to change appearance and move around at will. From here Malcolm is taken on a journey that involves Wotan, God of Valhalla, and his 8 Valkyrie daughters (who nag him about housework), various giants and demi-gods and a good dose of surreal, reality-infused fantasy. 

Expecting Someone Taller had me laughing out loud in airport queues and on the airplane, and I fairly zipped through it, finishing it on the plane home, 4 days later. Entertaining and lightweight, but with some engrossing themes, incorporating old Norse Gods - fitting, given the location I was reading about them in - the book was a refreshingly breezy antidote to London and it's weighty ambition.