Books: The Portable Door by Tom Holt (2003)

“Starting a new job is always stressful (particularly when you don't particularly want one), but when Paul Carpenter arrives at the office of H.W. Wells he has no idea what trouble lies in store. Because he is about to discover that the apparently respectable establishment now paying his salary is in fact a front for a deeply sinister organisation that has a mighty peculiar agenda. It seems that half the time his bosses are away with the fairies. But they're not, of course. They're away with the goblins.”

I tried The Portable Door because I saw a trailer for an Australian made film version and it looked intriguing. I mean it has Oscar winner Christoph Walta, Sam Neill, and Miranda Otto in it, and, as noted, the premise looked interesting. So I got the book off of ThriftBooks and just finished it and I got to say, it’s clear the trailer for the film was taking liberties with the books plot (unless all the actors decided slumming in a low budget fantasy film looked fun). I mean, I liked the premise, a tale about an everyday man who discovers a talent for magic and gets co-opted into the office managing the surreal. But the book is bogged down in so much exposition, with a terribly uninteresting main character, who may be disillusioned about life and the fact that his parents moved to Florida to retire and did not invite Paul, but none the less is still annoying. You could say, because Holt is a British and he’s mocking, taking a satirical poke, at the youth of 2003 (when this book was released) that they have no idea how to live on their own because their parents never taught them how to survive. Still, Paul is boring and shows little to no interest or even curiosity into what he’s got himself involved in. He spends the entire book mooning over his co-worker Sophie –who also shows little interest in what is happening at this company they’ve both been hired at.

It’s quirky, yes, and it Holt appears to like juxtaposing the mundane with the fantastic, and his take on office life is fairly realistic, but it took nearly 200 pages for the “portable door” to arrive on the scene, and by then things just never gelled until last quarter of the tale. This is also the first of seven books set in this universe, but like Ordinary Monsters, I’m very doubtful I will continue on. 

The trailer for the film, to debut on April 7 on the streaming MGM+, is below. But, again, this film seems no way connected to the book.

Books: Expecting Someone Taller by Tom Holt (1987)

“Malcolm Fisher inherits a magic ring from a dying badger and becomes the much-disputed Ruler of the World. Everyone wants the ring--despite the fearsome curse upon it. And Malcolm is about to learn that some are born to greatness, and some are, well, badgered into it.”

Way back in the 1980s, ACE Books, a division of St. Martin’s Press, released a lot of humorous fantasy novels (along with some serious ones) to counter the many other fantasy novels that Del Ray was putting out. Most were okay, parodies mostly of The Lord of The Rings, or just books that took the genre less seriously. After stumbling upon Tom Holt’s Expecting Someone Taller at Sideshow Books here in West LA, I can’t remember if I saw this book when it was released in 1987. At the time, I was deep into many series fantasy books and would, on occasion, read the more sillier books that came out, like Craig Shaw Gardner’s Ebenezum series (and a few others he wrote), John DeChanice’s Castle Perilous series, and Myth Adventures by Robert Lynn Asprin. Sprinkled within was (at least) the first ten volumes of Piers Anthony’s Xanth books.

Anyways, there was a lot, and there is a good chance either I saw the book and was not interested or missed it completely. So while the book has its charms and a promising premise (taking the characters and themes of Wagner’s Ring Cycle and setting them in a modern day sleepy English village), it never really took off for me. The humor is never laugh-out-loud, but it also never really gels into typical satire the British seem to do so well at. Still, this was Holt’s first novel and has spent the last 30 years writing humorous takes on every myth, fairy tale, and supernatural aspect that you can shake a leg at. He’s been pretty prolific and it surprises me that I’ve never heard of him.

So I might excuse Holt for failing to make the most of his initial premise because it was his first book, but on the other hand, since it falls short –for me anyways- to live up to its premise, I don’t find myself invested enough to move into the many other books he’s written.

Which makes me wonder if I had discovered him back in 1987, would have I continued to read his books like I’ve done with Stephen King? But then again, like many of those fantasy books I read a thousand years ago, I’ve stopped reading a lot of those authors, like Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Stephen R. Donaldson, David Eddings (though dead I never read anything else of his beyond The Belgariad and The Malloreon series), and Raymond E. Feist. Even Robert Asprin continued to write more Myth books in collaboration with author Jodi Lynn Nye until his death in 2008.

I realized that part of me has moved on from the genre, which is highly predictable. But also, part of me realizes that those books were read when I was a lost boy, trying to find my place in the world. They filled the empty hours of my life. Much like the world, I’ve moved on, and only on occasions, do I dip my toes back into this genre. Sometimes I disappointment myself.