Tom Holt

Cafe Society
1

I haven’t seen any discussion threads about Holt, so I’m starting one.

I discovered Tom Holt the same trip to the bookstore I discovered Terry Pratchett. There wasn’t a big selection, so I picked out two books with interesting titles- The Fifth Elephant and Nothing But Blue Skies- and took them back to my hotel room. I feel in love. My library didn’t have much in the way of Holt, but I ordered Snow White and the Seven Samurai from the internet, and began buying his stuff from Barnes & Noble.

I’ve found Tom Holt to be a tremendously uneven writer. His books span the gamut from really good to absolutely horrible. He’s written good books with one major logical flaw, mediocre books with great monologues, and silly books that are supposed to be funny, but aren’t. He’s written many, many characters with the names of Neville or Jane. He’s written more or less the same scenario for 80% of his books. You never know when you pick one of his up whether it will be a laugh-fest or a clunker.

IMO, his four best books are the aforementioned Blue Skies and Snow White, plus Faust Among Equals, and the immortal Who’s Afraid of Beowolf?. My Hero is decent. The Portable Door is fairly good, although it’s sequels involve the most blatant ret-conning I’ve laid eyes on. Wish You Were Here almost makes the top five, but it has a subplot which is poorly explained and makes no sense.

Be warned- if you didn’t like Rincewind, you won’t like Tom Holt. His major characteristic is sheer, unadulterated silly. If you’re not looking for any Serious Social Messages, but just want to relax with crazy plots, off-the-wall metaphors, quotable one-liners, and a lot of pretty good attempts at bringing slapstick to the printed page, then Tom Holt is the guy for you.

He also wrote one of my favorite paragraphs in all of literature:

Gordan thought about it. On the one hand, he didn’t like the thought of getting out of there because Neville had been able to decipher a secret access code using his third eye. On the other hand… as the old adage goes, if you’re starving in the desert and a headless skeleton riding a winged fiery camel swoops down out of thin air and hands you a cheeseburger, eat the cheeseburger.
-from Nothing But Blue Skies, pg. 139

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I got into Pratchett around age 11 when Josh Kirby was the illustrator. I remember seeing another book in a shop with a cover by the same illustrator and decided to give it a go. The book was Ye, Gods! and it was fantastic - loved every moment of it. I got into Tom Holt as well as Pratchett and piled through his back catalogue which I agree is extremely variable. My favourites are definitely: Grailblazers, Faust Amongst Equals, Odds and Gods and the Portable Door (and its sequels, I love the JW Wells universe).

Some of his books really do suck donkey dick - I quit reading Earth, Air, Fire and Custard and Barking part way through as they were bilge. Ones I wish I’d stopped reading to save myself the pain were Djinn Rummy and My Hero.

If you like Pratchett then give Holt a go. Most of the books cover totally isolated stories although some characters pop up in more than one book. My personal recommendation for a place to start would be Ye, Gods! which worked for me. Otherwise The Portable Door is another one, I’ve lent it to a couple of friends who’ve really enjoyed it.

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I have read and enjoyed a few of his books–Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?, Expecting Someone Taller, and Flying Dutch. I rated him as amusing but minor and repetitive, and not worth the effort to seek out more.

On the other hand, later on I stumbled *Goatsong *and the Walled Orchard. I can’t categorize why, but those books struck me as masterpieces, both amazingly great. I don’t think he has written anything else like them, though.