Tom Holt

In Your Dreams

Jeff James

Another entertaining book by Tom Holt, although I got a bit bogged down in the middle. This is the middle book in a trilogy, and wasn't quite as entertaining as the first one, but was still worth my time. I'll have to track down the third book to get a resolution to the story, although the reviews on amazon.com seem to think #3 isn't as good. So far Tom Holt seems like a hit-and-miss author. The other two books I've read by him, Flying Dutch and Faust Among Equals, were alternately entertaining and terribly mediocre, in that order. However, something made me pick up "The Portable Door", and I'm glad I did. Holt seems to do better with a nebbishy Englishman for a protagonist, as opposed to Faust or the captain of The Flying Dutchman. I'm imagining that it's a sort of "write what you know" phenomenon. Anyways, I've got two other (non JW Wells trilogy) books by Holt waiting in the wings, so it'll be interesting to see how they turn out. He's just entertaining enough that I'll keep checking out his other writing, but he's no Terry Pratchett, not by a long shot.

Sarah Escorsa

I'm sorry but I can't review this book. Not that I don't want to or that I'm too lazy to bother, it's just that the whole thing is so all over the place you'd have to be as insane as Tom Holt to try and review it. What? You think "all over the place" = bad book? Well, you've obviously never read anything by Tom Holt before. 



Yes, sanity is greatly overrated in Tom Holt's world. I still haven't decided if the guy should be locked in an insane asylum for life or given a lifetime residency at Mensa. Because you have to be either supremely talented or totally deranged to write stuff like this. Then again, there might be another explanation: Tom Holt has a Crazy Magic Box. He throws every single wacky idea floating around his little head in the box, says a few magic words and tada! A coherent story is automatically sent to his publisher. Yep, that must be it. And I'm pretty sure that without the help of the Crazy Magic Box most readers would probably look like this after going through one of Holt's books:



Take this story for example. It's about a guy called Paul Carpenter. Just your regular type of guy. He works as a clerk for J.W. Wells & Co. You know, your typical, boring, 9 to 5 job. Nothing special, right? Right. Nothing special except that his bosses are magical practitioners. The kind that turn their employees into staplers and photocopiers when they misbehave. Well, they do that on good days, you don't want to know what happens on bad days. Then again, every day seems to be a bad day for Paul lately. Especially since he started interning in the Pest Control department. I mean, no one bothered to tell him he was now in the Hero business. And that he'd be expected to oversee wyvern regulations. But I have to admit Paul proved quite resourceful in that particular matter. Hey, who would have thought the bum was mightier than the sword? Not you, I bet. Well let me tell you, bums are as underrated as insanity.



Working for JWW has its perks too. Look at Paul here: he has a temperamental company car named Monika. Monika is German (obviously) and speaks English with a terrible accent but she's a pretty decent GPS. And likes playing hangman. And she can read thoughts, too. Pretty nifty, huh? Yes, it is. Except when Monika breaks down in the middle of the countryside. Good thing there are car repair shops managed by creepy lovely 12-year-olds. How else would you make it back to the office before 5pm? And believe me, you don't want to be at the office after 5pm. I mean, the goblin cleaning crew is quite freaky efficient but doesn't really see sanitation the way us poor humans do. 



Apart from that, working at JWW is pretty cool, I don't know why Paul keeps freaking out complaining. His job is all kinds of awesome: he has a portable door in his pocket, gets to visit the Bank of the Dead and enters filling cabinets with spiral stone staircases. He also gets to use pens, screwdrivers, chalks and watches as preemptive weapons. The office receptionist even has the hots for him! Too bad she's kind of pregnant. And his boss' mother. And a nymphomaniac. And a goblin. But hey, you can't have everything, can you? Besides, she's much friendlier than that evil, obnoxious bicycle with a Moses complex that keeps insulting people and issuing death threats. 



She's also a tinsy bit less disturbing than Countess Judy di Castel'Bianco, the head of the Glamour department. Everyone in the office knows she's a truly nasty piece of work that shouldn't be trusted any further than you can sneeze her through a blocked nostril. So really, things could be worse. Paul could get mixed up in a Fey civil war or something. Oh, wait, he kind of did. But that's to be expected when you work for a bunch of crazy goblins, small giants and regular-size dwarves. It's pretty much part of the job description. Like being chased by hundreds of malicious, grinning children (think Stephen King moonlighting as script editor for The Brady Bunch). Or crossing the path of Grendel's freaky aunt. You know same old, same old, just another day at the office.



This is silly. This is crazy. This is funny. This is all over the place. Welcome to the Wonderful World of Tom Holt. 95% of the people on this planet consider Terry Pratchett their comic fantasy god. Mine is Tom Holt. His books can be hit or miss but the wacky never disappoints. The guy's got insane stuff for every taste:

► You like Norse mythology? Read Valhalla.
► You like pacts with the devil? Read Faust Among Equals.
► Interested in the Holy Grail? Read Grailblazers.
► You like dragons and patron saints? Read Paint Your Dragon.
► You like talking bombs, doom and destruction? Read Blonde Bombshell.
► Interested in ghostly adventures at sea? Read Flying Dutch.
► You like giants and the dark ages? Read Expecting Someone Taller. 

And the moral of this review is: you want nutty? You want senseless? You want weird? You want totally absurd and completely irrational? Read Tom Holt.

In Your Dreams

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