21st July 2010

This book is remarkably similar to its predecessor. Paul Carpenter is baffled by his job and falling madly in love with the new girl in the office. Magical things are going on around him and he's dragged into the action in a comic battle between good and evil.

I was surprised by how quickly this book resets things, with Paul's girlfriend, who he spent the entire previous book wooing, exiting the narrative almost immediately as if the author couldn't bear to write about his character in a relationship.

I still feel ambivalent about this series. The books start really slowly and I don't get into them until halfway through. I can't identify with the character who seems to have no motivation or interest in anything. The plots are confusing and random - with most novels you get to the end and get an 'of course' moment, where everything slots together, but with this one that never happened. Despite this there are also parts which are obvious right from the start. And yet I still think I should be enjoying reading it.

So only three stars. I think I enjoyed it, but I can't think of why - I can only come up with negative things to say.

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5th May 2010

I was actually attracted to Tom Holt's novels when Amazon recommended me 'May Contain Traces of Magic', but as that appears to be the latest novel in a series, I decided to start here with the first novel.

'The Portable Door' is the tale of Paul Carpenter, who has given up hope of ever finding a job or a girlfriend, when suddenly the opportunity for both come along at once. It's just a shame that his new employer has forgotten to tell him exactly what they do - and that he has to try very hard to ignore all the strange goings-on in the workplace - not least the question of where the long stapler has gone now.

I wouldn't say that this novel is 'laugh-out-loud funny', but it does have it's moments, and I'm not particularly prone to laughing at novels. It takes a little while to get going - in fact it didn't really grab my attention properly until about halfway through, and was only gripping in the final quarter. The characters started off rather unlikable - there was nothing in Paul that I could really identify with, particularly as he didn't seem to have any sense of curiosity at all.

When it did pick up though was where things finally began to make sense. Until that point Holt had expertly crafted the confusion - dropping in all the different elements in a seemingly natural way without making it obvious to the reader what those pieces would make when put together. In a way it's similar to the Dirk Gently novels of Douglas Adams. Then at the conclusion everything is pulled together and tied up nicely, before you are thrown into confusion again.

I had my doubts initially (particularly as the story I found myself reading bore only a superficial resemblance to the blurb on the back) but it picked up, and I'm definitely in the market for the sequel.

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