The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse by Tom Holt

Published by Orbit on October 10, 2023

I don’t read much fantasy, particularly the kind that involves swords and wizards, dragons, and epic battles. I make an exception for Tom Holt’s interpretation of fantasy. He seems to recognize that most stories in the genre are a bit silly. He exploits the silliness to wring humor from the genre’s tired ideas.

Dawson, Ahriman, & Dawson is a firm of commercial and industrial sorcerers, thaumaturgical and metaphysical engineers, and scholarly magicians. Their clients are primarily nations, planets, and huge businesses. Ahriman possesses fearsome power. He doesn’t usually work but he shows up at the office now and then to demand that the firm generate more money so he can cart it away. He doesn’t need the money but he likes to abuse his partners.

One of the partners, Edward Sunshine, probably doesn’t need to work since he can fill his palms with diamonds from his bottomless purse whenever the mood strikes. A woman who received a delivery intended for Alpha Centauri (the delivery notice says “left with neighbor”) brings it to Sunshine because a friend told her that “weird shit is what you do.” After determining that the object in the package is sentient and malevolent, Sunshine turns to Harmondsworth to help him deal with it. Harmondsworth usually lives in a drawer in Sunshine’s desk but sometimes moves his residence to a tea kettle.

Tom Dawson handles executive recruitment for the firm’s clients. He’s been hired by the planet Snoobis Prime to find a replacement for their god, who died. The not-quite-gods he’s interviewed clearly don’t have what it takes. He considers recommending Santa Claus, who has free time 364 days a year. Santa already has magic and it would only take worshippers to turn him into a god. The position interests Santa, assuming the health plan is adequate.

Brian Teasdale, the youngest partner, takes on the case of a wedding photographer who is troubled by the image of a woman who appears in every picture she takes. The partners eventually realize that the woman in the pictures has been trapped in an asteroid for four thousand years, where her ex-husband imprisoned her after a nasty divorce. Out of spite, she has taken control of the asteroid and has set it on a collision course with Earth. She expects the collision to free her from the asteroid as it destroys the planet that her husband received in the divorce settlement.

A few more characters round out the firm. Tom’s evil twin brother Jerry lives in a steel box in the basement, from which he is allowed to emerge to vote in partnership meetings. Tony Bateman is a shapeshifter. He might be a tree or he might be a toilet in the ladies’ room. Gina, who was once Queen of the Night, works as a sort of office assistant. The characters are considerably more fun than the typical swordsmen and sorcerers of fantasy who take themselves much too seriously.

The loose plot follows characters as they labor to save the Earth from the approaching asteroid, except for those who are interested only in saving themselves. Characters also engage in office politics as they try to undermine each other in their respective struggles to control the firm, or the Earth, or the universe.

Tom Holt excels at dry wit mixed with occasional moments of slapstick. Humor permeates the novel. Teasdale gets his morning coffee from a little caterer in Plato’s ideal reality, making it the best possible coffee. One of the firm’s clients is Consolidated Landrape. A mother creates a planet for her liberal young daughter to save and tells her, “now you really are the centre of the universe. What more could someone your age possibly ask for?” The plot is goofy but coherent, the characters are endearingly grumpy, and the laughs are plentiful. I would say this is Tom Holt at his best, but Tom Holt is always at his best.

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An Orc on the Wild Side by Tom Holt

Published by Orbit on September 10, 2019

An Orc on the Wild Side is a sequel to, or at least set in the same multiverse as, Doughnut and When It’s a Jar. Utilizing the pathway to the multiverse that was discovered in Doughnut, an entrepreneur sells real estate in the Hidden Realms to snooty Brits who can no longer afford to buy vacation properties in the south of France. The Hidden Realms have a primitive human population, but the more interesting residents are goblins, Elves, dwarves, halflings, trolls, and wraiths. Not to mention the Eye.

King Mordak is the new ruler of the goblins. His New Evil platform of reform has met with resistance, but liberal change is always resisted by traditionalists. Mordak understands that Evil always loses and, in fact, that is Evil’s fate in the long run, so maybe a new game plan is in order. Mordak’s latest problem is his successful attempt to create a female goblin. There has never been one before, and since females are stronger and better problem solvers than males, the goblins aren’t sure they are ready for one.

The strongest of the seven dwarf-lords is King Drain. He is preoccupied, however, by the discovery of eggbeaters and can openers, contraptions (he is told) that are made in a place called China. The gadgets speak to a sophisticated level of machining that dwarves have never managed. While Drain is worried that cheap Chinese goods will put dwarves out of work (at least if this place called China decides to market its wares in the Hidden Realms), a human who calls herself Snow White sees the opportunity to make some cash — the very reason she traveled to the Hidden Realms.

Other complications arise when the humans back in our universe vote in favor of Rexit, a reality exit referendum to seal off our universe from the rest of the multiverse for fear that immigrants from other universes will come to ours and take our jobs. That’s the kind of priceless humor that Tom Holt serves in abundance. I also appreciated the Eye’s definition of authority as “there’s more of us and we have all the weapons, so we can do what we like to you.”

Even with the reforms inspired by the New Evil, goblins are pretty awful, as are the other dwellers in the Hidden Realms, especially wraiths. ‘The wraith who’s tired of killing is tired of life.” But are humans really any better? Goblins and dwarves are at least honest about their nature. “Humans, alone of the Races, have a unique ability to believe things that are patently untrue, even when the facts are pulling their heads back by the hair and yelling in their faces.”

The humans in the story include Snow White, a lawyer (but not a very good one) who tires of serving Elves, the property owners who are having buyer’s regret, and Theo Bernstein, the fellow in an earlier novel who blew up the Very Very Large Hadron Collider. They all illustrate the folly of being human.

I’m not usually a big fan of fantasy, but the multiverse theory holds that everything is happening somewhere, blurring the distinction between fantasy and reality-based fiction. I am a big fan of Tom Holt. I grin my way through his novels and frequently laugh out loud. I love the way he mixes imagined absurdity with the absurdity of the world we inhabit. An Orc on the Wild Side is perfect for readers who don’t take fantasy, or for that matter humanity, too seriously. "It's better to laugh than to cry" is the message I take from Holt's inventive books.

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When It's a Jar by Tom Holt

Published by Orbit on December 17, 2013

When It's a Jar pushes the multiverse theory to absurd limits ... except, when you think about it (as Tom Holt clearly has), it's impossible to do that because a popular version of the theory assumes that absurd events (indeed, all events) actually occur in some part of the multiverse. There is no limit to absurdity because, in the multiverse, there are no limits at all. Hence Holt's formula for fun.

When is a door not a door? When it could be anything, including a portal between dimensions. In Doughnut, Holt explored interdimensional travel through a donut hole using something called YouSpace. The doughnuts are present in When It's a Jar, but Holt has added the notion of a "constant object," something that stays the same no matter what dimension it occupies. Rather than spoiling the surprise of what the constant object happens to be, I'll just say that once it's revealed, parts of the novel that seemed to make no sense at all gain meaning while other parts gain new meaning. And that's just cool. Almost as cool, in fact, as the guy living in a jar who manages by a process of reasoning to figure out pretty much everything there is to know until his memories get wiped out, forcing him to start all over ... again and again and again.

The key character in When It's a Jar is hapless Maurice, who (after seeing a levitating doughnut and realizing that physics is whack) has dedicated himself to being an unhappy slacker, a profession that his degree in media studies encourages. Maurice's unwanted destiny is to be a hero (or so he is told, often by complete strangers). Poor Maurice feels displaced, which makes sense given his uncertainty as to his place in the multiverse, an uncertainty that grows as he visits different universes. In the universe he likes best -- the best of all possible worlds -- he is a genius physicist billionaire who married the woman he loves. In the one he inhabits during most of the novel, the woman he loves is shagging his old schoolmate. The heroic act that is expected of Maurice involves Max (last seen in Doughnut) who is also stuck in the wrong part of the multiverse. Max needs Maurice to rescue him and then to save Max's brother, Theo Bernstein (last seen in Doughnut) who is stuck in -- you guessed it -- a jar. Theo, by the way, is also God (sort of -- just read Doughnut).

Holt has an astonishing ability to surround cleverness with goofiness. Some scenes are just wickedly funny, including one in which Katz is drugged and made to tell the truth during a job interview. Some (like an elf's explanation of the reason newspapers endure) are thought-provoking. Yes, there are elves and goblins and dragons, because they have to exist somewhere in the multiverse, but no need to worry -- this isn't a traditional fantasy, and goblins occupy only a small but very funny part of the novel.

You could probably read, understand, and enjoy When It's a Jar without first reading Doughnut, but given the overlapping storylines and the fact that Doughnut is also a very funny book, it's better to read them both. While the two novels share characters and concepts, When It's a Jar moves the story into new dimensions of weirdness. Taken together, they represent a unique, witty, and intelligent take on the multiverse theory.

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Doughnut by Tom Holt

Published by Orbit on March 5, 2013 

Doughnut is a playful take on the multiverse hypothesis. If you can travel between universes, does that make you a god?

Theo Bernstein is an unlikely god. Theo put a decimal point in the wrong place and the Very Very Large Hadron Collider blew up, along with some of Switzerland, so now Theo is looking for a job. That the accident left his right arm invisible only makes it more difficult for him to secure employment. Theo eventually returns to Switzerland to pick up a mysterious bottle bequeathed to him by Pieter van Goyen, a recently deceased colleague. The trip becomes more interesting when he meets a girl on a train who shows him some equations before she vanishes. Theo soon finds himself in YouSpace, sort of like Second Life combined with Westworld except that his destinations all seem to be random (and dangerous) points in the multiverse. A note left by Pieter tells Theo to have fun with it. Fun is pretty much out of the question.

Pieter's note also directs Theo to a job at a hotel that has only two (odd, mysterious) guests, where he works alongside (odd, mysterious) Matasuntha and her (odd, mysterious) boss. As Theo explores the multiverse, barely escaping multiple deaths (or not), he finds himself interacting with his a-hole brother and mentally ill sister, further enhancing his misery.

Theo is a likable if somewhat hapless protagonist, stuck with a dysfunctional family and used as a pawn by people he thought were his friends, making it easy to root for his success. As is often true of science fiction stories, whether Theo will prevail depends upon his ability to outwit everyone else.

Some aspects of Doughnut are hilarious, particularly when Tom Holt pokes fun at Microsoft. The overall story is clever, funny, and deep enough to provoke thought about the multiverse hypothesis without bogging down in discussions of science that may or may not be sound. I'm not sure the science (as Holt explains it) entirely makes sense (I'm skeptical about the invisible arm) but I am sure it doesn't matter. The point of comedy is to be funny, and Doughnut consistently made me smile.

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