Tom Holt’s The Portable Door is the first comic fantasy that I’ve liked in a while. His writing style is similar to Christopher Lamb and Terry Pratchett, although with slightly different subject matter. In this case, the subject matter made all the difference.
The protagonist is Paul Carpenter. At the beginning of the book he’s a never-employed young man whose parents have toodled off to Florida leaving him to fend for himself in London. So he’s looking for a job, and picks up a dreary one at a slightly odd company J. W. Wells & Co., where he spend much of his time sorting computer spreadsheets by day. Next to him sits Sophie, a bizarre angular
woman who he falls in love with, mostly because she’s there. To Paul, all women under the age of 40 and still alive are attractive in a sort of way. He doesn’t have much experience. Anyway, she’s not very nice, and doesn’t give him much of a chance. Not that her prospects are any better of course.
Then things go from odd to strange at J. W. Wells. Mysterious gashes appear on the walls, only to be miraculously repaired after lunch. One of his assignments is to find bauxite on satellite photos, which he does by a tingling sensation on his fingertips. And then there’s the replicas of Excalibur that appear in his apartment as well as Sophie’s. They are even encased in stone, not that either can pull them out and become King and Queen of England.
Will Sophie and Paul fall in love, to Paul’s delight? What is the mysterious firm up to? And if there’s a bad guy that I haven’t mentioned, who is he, what’s he up to, and how does Paul foil him?
Can you tell I enjoyed this book? I really did. Nice to give a glowing review for once.
Title: The portable door
Author: Tom Holt
Imprint / publisher: Orbit / Time Warner Book Group UK
Format: Paperback
Length: 404 p.
Publication date: 2004
ISBN-10: 1-84149-208-6
