The Portable Door

I tend towards reading dark comedies and this book seemed to fit the bill. It was an ok book. The story felt to me like it was trying too hard though. Part of me wants to rate it two stars but it was well written enough to keep me hoping for more all the way until the end. It never delivered but at least I had hope.It's mysterious walk through a magical world that is so great of s secret that you'll never become invested in it. The tail is a quagmire of twists and turns down dead end roads that leaves the reader unsure of what they may want more of. Sadly, by the end of your journey you still don't like or care about most of the characters and you'll be left wondering why you made the trek at all. Holt does his best to slam together an ending that ties up most of the loose ends that you didn't realize existed until he pounded them together like a preschool collage in the last chapter.

If you want a brainless, mildly amusing read, this is the book for you. It seems to be written for the middle school or high school age group, so you won't have to worry about any complicated ideas, advanced vocabulary, or adult concepts or situations. The premise of the book seems intriguing, but it either isn't very well written or is intended for middle school or high school audiences.

Tom Holt must have a vocabulary of over a million words including the ones he makes up, and that is just counting the English language. But the way he uses them to tell a smart, funny story is amazing. His stories are not too serious nor too blood and gutsy, not too sexy, and are smartly funny. You probably will not laugh out loud much, but you will smile a lot.

J.W. Wells & Co. Book OneThis is the first book I've read from Tom Holt. His imagination is unlike anyone else.The plot that involves The Portable Door, doesn't come until the second half of the book. It gives time for the main characters to believe that the bizarre events and things around them are now part of their ever day life. Their lives change drastically the moment Paul and Sophie are hired at J.W. Wells & Co. and sign a contract sealing their fate. In fact the only ones who don't seem to know about Paul and Sophie's fate, are Paul and Sophie themselves.Anything and everything can and will happen in this book. It's full of mystery, suspense, and most of all, fantasy. With a wild imagination and the talent to piece it all together in one book, Tom Holt proves he can take you on an adventure like no other.I already added the rest of Tom Holt's books to my giant stack of books to be read. I give The Portable Door a 4/5.

Right from the start this felt like a Robert Rankin novel, main characters dealing with weird forces/characters in weird ways, without a lot of knowledge about how to do it. I could not get this comparison out of my head while reading, and that said, it didn't detract from or enhance my reading enjoyment. I would like to say that Paul and Sophie are not normal people, because they just stumble along blindly in ignorance, whereas (as I see it) any person that was *actually* in their situation would be asking a lot more questions...but there are all kinds of people in the world, so there are probably people like them, afraid to ask their employers what's going on. Overall, if you're a Rankin fan, this is probably most like "Web Site Story," and will entertain you.

Maybe you think your boss is an ogre - you haven't seen anything.Paul and Sophie meet at a job interview, commiserating over the steady stream of handsome, well-dressed, competent-looking people interviewing ahead of them. They both know that, if added together, they might total a whole personality (but not a very interesting one). They are both surprised to meet each other again on starting day at the new job. They are surprised again at the mind-numbing boredom of the apparently senseless tasks they are given, but even more suprised at the weirdness that starts to emerge as they sort and file. Was that really a love letter from Sophie to Paul in the archives - dated 100 years ago?That's where the story really starts, and Holt steers it along an amusing route in his trademark form: the hero never quite knowing what's going on, in and out the mysterious doorways, and increasing strangeness right to the end. This time Holt adds a comical attempt at romance between two people who seem to like the idea, but don't quite know how to go about it. (That anarcho-socialist ceramics performance artist doesn't help anything.)This is a good one, but I think Holt put a lot more book around the story than it really needed. Yes, we see from the start that Paul and Sophie are both the Novacaine of social sensation. Yes, we are tantalized by the gathering clues that all is not what it seemed. I think all that could have been established in a bit les than 175 pages, though, and the next 200+ pages were only a bit more tightly-packed.If you're the kind who gets testy when Pratchett's next book is later than you want, Holt might help you get by. He has a lot of the same slanted view of the world, and a lot of the same funny/fantasy story line. Holt has written some very good stories, and this is a good one. I have to admit, though, that readers new to Holt might get a better first impression by reading another title first.//wiredweird

I just plain love everything Tom writes.From the vivid characterizations to the crackling dialogue, his plot twists to his vivid imagination, Holt deserves to be in the same conversation with Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Yes, he's that good.

This writer is new to me despite his having written numerous stories. I thoroughly enjoyed his writing and the story.This is a zany and fast-moving adventure fantasy with well drawn characters - even the shape-shifting goblins are memorable.The portable door is as it says on the box or envelope: a fold-up door which you can carry and affix to a flat surface to enter a new location and time.You do need to go with the flow of the plot lines: love philtres, a portable door, a new receptionist every day, a building with so many corridors that you really require a map to move around the premises effectively, managers whose looks defy their ages, educations and skills.Very enjoyable. 4 stars for this story. If the author's other stories are as good, or even better, 5 stars will surely follow.Great fun.

I was actually attracted to Tom Holt's novels when Amazon recommended me 'May Contain Traces of Magic', but as that appears to be the latest novel in a series, I decided to start here with the first novel.'The Portable Door' is the tale of Paul Carpenter, who has given up hope of ever finding a job or a girlfriend, when suddenly the opportunity for both come along at once. It's just a shame that his new employer has forgotten to tell him exactly what they do - and that he has to try very hard to ignore all the strange goings-on in the workplace - not least the question of where the long stapler has gone now.I wouldn't say that this novel is 'laugh-out-loud funny', but it does have it's moments, and I'm not particularly prone to laughing at novels. It takes a little while to get going - in fact it didn't really grab my attention properly until about halfway through, and was only gripping in the final quarter. The characters started off rather unlikable - there was nothing in Paul that I could really identify with, particularly as he didn't seem to have any sense of curiosity at all.When it did pick up though was where things finally began to make sense. Until that point Holt had expertly crafted the confusion - dropping in all the different elements in a seemingly natural way without making it obvious to the reader what those pieces would make when put together. In a way it's similar to the Dirk Gently novels of Douglas Adams. Then at the conclusion everything is pulled together and tied up nicely, before you are thrown into confusion again.I had my doubts initially (particularly as the story I found myself reading bore only a superficial resemblance to the blurb on the back) but it picked up, and I'm definitely in the market for the sequel.

Nice flow to the writing, liked the concepts an odd workplace that you didn't really think, that traps magically. But the woman getting knocked out and being a helpless idiot everytime, and her specially ability being given to the main male character. Her conveniently out the room when he got help/ spoilers from mentor figures, and the sexy lady trickster goblin plot made the storyline feel sexist (though could be ignored and put down as the main character having odd attitudes to women), but it made the story feel a little Gary Sue...Other than that nice enough easy sci fi read for work lunch breaks

50% of the book is just a guy going to the office sorting paperwork then going home, thats just a crap job not an entertaining book that I spent 10 hours reading. The last half of the book is a bit better but not the laugh out loud type of book others think it is

I think I would have given this book 4 stars when I first finished reading it, but it has stayed with me and I've enjoyed remembering it since. I had never read anything like it, so I was thinking "what? No. That's ridiculous!" constantly through the early chapters, then I got used to it and started to really like it. It was warm, charming, very funny and I guess it was fantasy in our times - strangely more difficult to accept than hobbits, perhaps because the world hobbits inhabit is not quite ours. I will read another Tom Holt novel based on this one and would recommend this one to anyone with a bit of imagination and a sense of humour.