The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse

By: Tom Holt

Narrated by: Dan Starkey, Daphne Kouma

Tom Holt’s brilliantly funny new novel set in the world of The Portable Door (now a delightful movie starring Patrick Gibson, Sophie Wilde, and Christoph Waltz).

The team of commercial sorcerers at Dawson, Ahriman & Dawson can help with any metaphysical engineering project, large or small (though by definition they all tend to be pretty large).

They can also create massive great puddles of chaos that might one day swallow up the entire universe.

Take, for example, the decision to recruit a certain bearded fellow whose previous work experience mainly involves reindeer and jingle bells. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but is he really the best person to save the world from Tiamat the Destroyer, who has literally gone ballistic?

For more from Tom Holt, check out:
An Orc on the Wild Side
The Management Style of the Supreme Beings
The Good, The Bad, and the Smug
The Outsorcerer's Apprentice
When It's a Jar
Doughnut
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages
Blonde Bombshell

Tom Holt at his best

I believe I've read all of Holt's works and I think this might possibly be his best yet. Hopefully we can convince him not to die before creating more

gods and lawyers

where do you go when you want to hire a new God. who will conduct the interviews? Another different and unique take on offices politics.

unfortunately the audio quality is not good if you're listening on earbuds. hopefully they will correct it.

Painful. narration

OK, so at least Ray Sawyer (the guy who usually narrates Tom Holt books and speaks so slowly I have to kick him up to 1.5x) didn't do this one. Dan Starkey did a passable job, though he did emphasize some words oddly and change the meaning of some sentences. Daphne Kouma has a VERY annoying way of adding a "k" sound to the ends of words ending in "ing." Is this how the cool kids in London speak now? Words like "nothing" and "worrying" become "nothink" and "worryink." She also didn't seem to have read the book before diving in to narrate it. Like when the monkey familiar turned back into a necklace, she emphasized the word "bling!" as if it was a sound, rather than the familiar turning back into bling (the necklace). She did do a good job voicing Erica though. I loved that she had a Northern accent.

Narration issues aside, the story was the usual patchwork of cleverness and craziness that Tom Holt reliably writes. Storylines cross and recross, new characters spring out of the woodwork, and everyone gets to be snarky. If you like Tom Holt's other books, you'll likely enjoy this one. No previous J. W. Wells characters appear, though there are plenty of mortals, gods and immortals stumbling around, trying to save the earth from Santa's ex-wife. I did enjoy the story, though I wish I'd just read it in Kindle format and skipped the audiobook.