People always recommend Holt in my Discworld groups, and I just read this and a few others under his other name. I see why my people recommended them -- they're humorous books that use fantasy elements to tell wild stories. Holt isn't as satirical as Pratchett, but he's quite clever and fun.
This book is fun because of the people. The members of this firm keep their own interests up front, but the action is coming to a head as the end of the world approaches. I probably would have given all 5 stars but I had a little trouble keeping track of who was who. Definitely a fun ride, though. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

Over the top and completely absurd - and also funny and zany. While it might look like a Christmas novel (which is what inspired me to pick it up), it isn't - Santa is just a character applying for the job of god of another planet - a job he is turned down for. He comes back later in the store because of a need for someone who can appear anywhere as long as he can conjure a chimney - and also he has a sleigh and reindeer that travel faster than the speed of light. In general, the world is at risk, office politics and millenia old grudges are in play, and the sillier and more absurd the solutions, the better. Not for everyone, but if you enjoy Douglas Adams or Christopher Moore and want a raucous, crazy, way out there read that makes you chuckle, pick this one up.

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.

RECOMMENDED

I had a lot of fun reading this, it had a great fantasy element to it and flowed well in the universe that was set. Tom Holt always does a great job with writing this and creating unique characters overall.

Everything about The Eight Reindeer Of The Apocalypse by Tom Holt appealed to me. The great cover, the fun title and the intriguing blurb. BUT…

I had a couple of moments when I smiled but I kept trying too hard to make it work for me.

It depends what ereader I look at but I got to 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through and gave up.

Tom Holt is a prolific writer that has a lot of readers who enjoy his work, but I don’t think I am one of them. Was it the writing style? Is satire not for me? Either way, just because it didn’t work for me doesn’t mean it won’t work for you.

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It all starts with Alice being temporarily abducted by creatures from outer space who had her sign for a package. Of course it was not for her. Alice brought it to Mr. Sunshine who used to be a partner in Dawson, Ahriman & Dawson, but still have connections. He promised to look into it, but then just slipped it into a safe place until the package could be properly delivered. As is typical in recent Tom Holt books, the magician characters are trying to up one another, weasel out of obligations, and of course, make gobs of money. But on the way they need to save the world, in this case from a wrathful ex-wife trapped in an asteroid she has aimed at Earth. Plenty of characters snarking at each other while trying to figure out how to get out of the fine mess they are in. And then comes the maiden in to save the day in the nick-of-time. Tom Holt adds a final laugh at the end. So all, in all, a nice solid, fun Tom Holt read!

Thanks Netgalley and Orbit for the chance to read this title and feed my Tom Holt addiction!

I was disappointed. I thought this was going to be a twist on Santa and his reindeer. Instead I got a sci-fi apocalyptic novel about a bearded man saving the world. I should have read the description more closely. I also feel this book almost had too much funny? It was trying so hard to be hilarious it became overbearing.

The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse is another office politics / industrial espionage caper featuring the wizards and demigods at J.W.Wells & co, written by Tom Holt. Released 10th Oct 2023 by Orbit Books, it's 336 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.

For fans of the author, the full-bore frenetic humor is front and centre here as well. Interoffice politics, sarcasm, sniping, and the occasional dirty deed (for the right price) feature heavily. There are demigods, infernal agents, banks in the realm of the dead, and excursions to killer asteroids, death, and (literal) destruction on offer.

This is one for fans of Charles Stross, Christopher Moore, Ben Aaronovitch, and of course, current fans of the author. For fantasy fans who don't already have him on their must-read list... it's -very- sharply sarcastic and almost frenetically humorous which can come across as trying too hard in places. For all that, it's absolutely cleverly convoluted and very well constructed.

There's an old chestnut attributed to Chekhov: "a gun presented in act 1 must be used by act 3" and the author is absolutely virtuoso at this narrative prestidigitation. There are incidental details written in which seem to simply have absolutely no bearing on the story which wind up getting whipped out at the denouement and used to devastating effect.

Four stars, it's funny, bonkers, and chaotic. That rating will be higher for folks who already love his other work, and this fits very well in his oeuvre. It's the 8th book to feature some of these returning characters, but works fine as a standalone.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

This is the first time I've read this author's work. I'm thankful to the publisher and netgalley for letting me do so. This author is a definite humorist and this book is very funny. It is full of whit that seems to be fed to many a British author along with their mother's milk. This story revolves around the employees and partners of a magical firm in a decidedly magical London. They are hired to solve various problems via magic that their clients may have, usually from very large sums of money. And therein likes the plot. We have a mysterious parcel of extraterrestrial origin, A woman being stalked through the photographs she takes and a interviewing process to find a diety for a backwater planet. Did I mention there are Gods in this book? There are. Some are pleasant, some are devious and one is downright hostile. Between all the craziness going on in the book there is also an impending doom that this collection of misfits must thwart. I enjoyed every page of this book and didn't set it down until it was done. Excellent read.

I haven’t read anything by Tom Holt before, but I’ve always heard really good things about his books.
I can honestly say that I wasn’t disappointed by this book, but I wasn’t overwhelmingly impressed, either.
The book centers around a firm of sorcerers who fix problems for people.
That seems like a great place to start, but with everything going on in the book, it also seemed kind of random and thrown together.
In the end, though, I did wind up enjoying this book for what it was and I will be looking into other books in this series.

Hmmm. Not sure how to review this one to be honest. I have read Tom Holt books, although not in quite some time, so this one caught my eye because I thought, why not give him a try again because I've always liked him. But the books I have read by him are the literary ones. I had never picked up any of the ones in the J.W. Wells series. Maybe I needed to have read the other books in the series before jumping into this companion piece, because while it was kind of a stand alone, I feel like some of the world building (although set in our world so more like magic world building) was assumed in a way that left me confused for the first 50 pages. Oh, who am I kidding, I was confused from start to finish with this book. BUT after the first 50-100 pages, I started to figure a few things out and it became a bit less confusing.

Perhaps the names and how they were presented in the book could have been simplified. And that may have been easier for me to figure out. Tom and Ted were such similar names, but then you threw in their last names as well, and I was a lost cause. Also the familiars both had "H" names. And then folks were referred to as their proper names, their last names, and their deity names .... And Dawson had two Dawsons like Jekyll and Hyde ..... Yah, I was a lost cause from the start.

The story is interesting. The characters were all pretty unlikeable with. a few exceptions here and there. And the humour was not really funny for me. So, while I like Holt, not sure I like this type of story from him. I was on the fence for a rating. Part of me wanted to go lower because it wasn't my thing, but then by the last 50 pages, I got into the story so I couldn't not give it a higher rating. But I couldn't go higher because, well, I was not a true fan.

I did spend an inordinate amount of time trying to pick apart the various chapter headings and how they corresponded to the story. In the end, I feel like they were just. a gimmick because very few seemed to align.

I had never read a book by this author, so I thought. I did read one under a pseudonym, but I didn’t realize that until I read this book. This was a very interesting tale of a business who made what might be a bad decision. I loved how we went from one employee to another and saw events/things from another’s perspective. This is a funny look, and the book moves really quickly, almost too quickly for me since I read so fast, and I tend to lose track of who’s talking about what. That aside, though, this is a thoroughly enjoyable read especially for those who like this author. Recommend. I was provided a complimentary copy which I voluntarily reviewed.

Well, that was certainly a wild and crazy ride. I don't even know how to begin to describe this book, other than to say that it's very, very silly.

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this one. At the beginning I found it super amusing, but over time the hilariousness got to be a little much. I mean, a funny story is one thing, but almost every paragraph in this book is completely absurd and I just got kind of immune to the humor after a while, I suppose? Take the humor in your average Christopher Moore or Terry Pratchett novel and then double (or maybe even triple) it, and that might come close to the the level of “constantly funny” that we're talking about here. It seems like a weird thing to complain about, I'll admit, but there is such a thing as trying too hard to be humorous and this book definitely straddles that line.

With that said, there are some truly funny bits in this book and I found myself laughing out loud several times. The plot of this book mostly revolves around the employees of Dawson, Ahriman & Dawson and they are tremendously amusing individuals … well, except for Mr Ahriman, he's just scary. Tony Bateman reminded me strongly of Tony Wonder's character from Arrested Development and I could only picture him as Ben Stiller (who played Wonder). Mr. Sunshine, however, is perhaps my favorite character of the bunch, and his scenes in the Bank of the Dead are some of the best in the book.

The plot itself was entertaining and original, but it was definitely all over the place. It's basically a bunch of characters bumbling around (humorously and mostly ineffectively) trying to stop the world from ending. There's lots of backstabbing and arguing in the process. There are shapeshifters and gods and demigods and familiars and demons. And although he does play a role, there's a lot less Santa Claus than I would have expected considering the title. Reindeer too, for that matter.

So, I dunno, I suppose this book gets a 3.65 stars from me, rounded up because that's how rounding works. This is a funny novel, perhaps a little overly so, but if you enjoy Moore or Pratchett, there's a good chance you'll really like this one too.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Orbit Books for providing me an advance copy of this book to review.

"this is silly" is quite possibly the best way to sum this up. This book was a chaotic kinda legal dramedy about divorce, doom and Santa. I enjoyed the hell out of it!

Tom Holt's latest, "The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse," delivers exactly what it promises and what longtime readers will expect. It's a funny, slightly absurdist fantasy novel that builds on the world from "The Portable Door" (which, itself, riffed on a Gilbert & Sullivan musical just as Holt's earliest works took, at least, some inspiration from the opera world). The magical consultants at Dawson, Ahriman & Dawson navigate office politics that are almost as dangerous as their inadvertent assignment to save the world from the Tiamat the Destroyer with the help of Santa Claus. As always, Holt uses the fantastical to capture the absurdity and humor of the mundane. Without giving it away, the ending might be a little deus ex machina for some but it is the sort of tongue-in-cheek literary turn that also is part of Holt's charm.

This one was so different from any other book that I’ve read. The characters all hit the feels from beginning to end and honestly I just don’t think you will find a better book that is Xmas themed.

There was so much about this book I loved. The world-building is great as is character development. Indeed, the characters are amazing. The story itself is excellent and I couldn’t put the book down. I loved the subtle and not-so-subtle look at business and society. The banter between characters is excellent. There wasn’t anything about this book I didn’t love. Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for the digital review copy.