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The Soddit or Let's Cash In Again by A.R.R.R. Roberts
01/11/2004 . Source: Joules Taylor 
pub: Gollancz. 342 page smaller paperback. Price: £ 5.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-575-07591-0. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
Once in a lifetime - or maybe twice if you're lucky - a very rare book arrives on your doorstep, a book so profound, so lyrical, that it changes your perception forever.
'The Soddit', alas, is not one of those books.
It is, however, deliciously funny and very clever, full of puns, jokes and visual and aural witticisms - these last particularly on the map at the front of the book.
At the risk of being obvious, I should say that the book is a parody of 'The Hobbit'. In my opinion, it's not that difficult to write a parody, any competent writer can do so, but writing a good one, that's another matter. And 'The Soddit' is good. The humour ranges from the obvious and risqué to the subtle and restrained and works on many levels. But it all hangs together beautifully and has obviously been carefully crafted. Following Tolkien's own style, the author has given 'his' characters feasible back-stories and histories that differ quite substantially from the originals, but still manage to feel right. Even the oddities - like the very strange relationship between dwarfs, wizards and dragons - seem perfectly natural in context. While poking gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) fun at Tolkien, the book is nevertheless a captivating homage to the Professor's work. And the illustrations are wonderful!
I particularly love the footnotes. Some are useful. Some - though not many - are thought-provoking. And some are completely pointless but funny anyway, like the one on page 23. The sentence reads: 'The dwarfs brought out their own pipes, and soon the smoke was so thick in Bingo's sod hole that you couldn't see the smokers for the smoke./ (I said it was risqué!) The footnote to this little gem reads:-
'I've got a PhD you know, from Cambridge University. I just thought you might be interested in that fact. I'm not some bloke making this up from thin air, I'm a proper scholar, I studied Anglo-Saxon and everything.'
Um, yes...
Yet occasionally amidst the humour there's a strangely poignant, provocative, beautiful little passage that almost eerily recalls Tolkien's own work. (No, I'm not going to say where, you'll have to read the book to find them.) Hmmm...Perhaps this little volume had a more profound effect than I'd first thought, after all.
Joules Taylor
www.wordwrights.co.uk
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