Earth, Air, Fire and Custard [Paperback]

Tom Holt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2006

J.W. Wells seemed to be a respectable establishment, but the company now paying Paul Carpenter’s salary is, in fact, a deeply sinister organization with a mighty peculiar management team. Paul thought he was getting the hang of it—particularly when he fell head over heels for his strangely alluring colleague, Sophie—but death is never far away when you work at J.W. Wells. Our love-struck hero is about to discover that custard is definitely in the eye of the beholder. And that it really stings.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Tom Holt: 'Frantically wacky and wilfully confusing ... gratifyingly clever and very amusing' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Frothy, fast and funny' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY 'Dazzling' TIME OUT 'Wildly imaginative' NEW SCIENTIST

From the Publisher

J.W. Wells seemed to be a respectable establishment, but the company now paying Paul Carpenter's salary is, in fact, a deeply sinister organization with a mighty peculiar management team. Paul thought he was getting the hang of it (particularly when he fell head over heels for his strangely alluring colleague, Sophie), but death is never far away when you work at J.W. Wells. Our love-struck hero is about to discover that custard is definitely in the eye of the beholder. And that it really stings.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group (January 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841492817
• ISBN-13: 978-1841492810
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,087,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not as great as Portable Door or In Your Dreams., August 27, 2006

By 

A. Niebruegge "Selune" (Troy, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Earth, Air, Fire and Custard (Paperback)

3 stars for people just looking for a book to read.
4 stars for those who've read the other two books and are looking for a conclusion.

I'm sure most of you reading this know already, but this is the third (and probably final) book in the adventures of Paul Carpenter. The first was Portable Door, an excellent and witty book, and the second was In Your Dreams, which was almost as good.

Portable Door was terribly funny in that you could relate to so much of what Paul was going through. In Your Dreams kind of got bogged down in the fairy? story. It was more serious, not like the lighthearted romp of Portable Door.

EAF&C isn't really that funny at all. It does have moments of witty dialogue, but not the laugh-out-loud, repeat-the-lines-to-everyone-you-know sort of dialogue. Much of it even got confusing, and the explanations for the weird happenings didn't make sense. Whereas, In Your Dreams tied all the loose ends up and explained everything (you could just see how all the events tied together and made sense), EAF&C just lost me. They start all this talk about people hiding out in custard-space, and how Sophie and this goblin were linked through it, then there was this bit about living swords, battles that didn't get fought, etc. It was just all smushed together, and didn't really form a cohesive, fun-to-read story. I mean, I still love to read about Paul and his misadventures, but I really had to make an effort to get through this one. If you've read the previous two, you'll know what I say when I just wanted to get through it to see how Sophie and Paul ended up (which is resolved, by the way).

Overall, read it if you liked the other two in the series, but if you haven't read those, start out with Portable Door and In Your Dreams. By the end of those, you will want to find out what happens to Paul and the gang, but reading EAF&C alone won't really be a completely fun experience. I guess it seems that Tom Holt was just trying to finish up with Paul so that readers would be happy. Most of his books are much better than this one.

2.0 out of 5 stars The covers of this book are too far apart --Ambrose Bierce, April 12, 2011

By 

Elizabeth A. Root (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Earth, Air, Fire and Custard (Paperback)

I avoid reading dreary books--no matter how classic or well-written--and I never really thought to think that about a Tom Holt book. I don't mean that a book necessarily has to be sweetness and light, or have a happy ending, or be the best of all possible worlds. If I did, I wouldn't be quoting Ambrose Bierce, or consider his The Devil's Dictionary to be one of the joys of my life. But Paul and Sophie, especially Sophie, are just too hapless and whiny.

I wonder if the J.W. Wells books grew out of a rough patch in Tom Holt's life. The ending of In Your Dreams was so sad and bitter that I was a bit worried about his marriage. But still, I was eager to read this next installment, but I was disappointed and kept wishing the end of the book was closer. The bitterness undercuts any attempts at wit. This was just a constant recycling of scenes, with clunky rewrites of things that Holt apparently wished he had done differently. Oh no, I'd be thinking, not the land of the dead again! Can't Holt think of something new? Well, there is the Custard space, but Holt's usual crazy, whimsical humor fails, and I get very tired of the motif of the characters struggling to get out of it again by a new method every time. Despite having learned how to use magic to make his milk fresh, Paul still constantly has curdled milk, the Portable Door no longer works as it used to, and so on. (I don't want to give away too much of the plot.) There is a lengthy explanation at the end, but it still leaves a few things out, and frankly I don't care anyway. The story after the big explanation is just more dragging out of the plot, and not all of the loose ends are tied up. Paul and Sophie have gotten very wearing, and if that's supposed to be a happy ending for them, I don't care, and I'm sure they'll mess it up somehow.

I just hope this series is an anomaly and his recent stand-alone books are more along the lines of Expecting Someone Taller.

4.0 out of 5 stars Long time reading - fun tho, March 30, 2011

By 

John Hauer "travel reader" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Earth, Air, Fire and Custard (Paperback)

I like Tom Holt. I buy him so I have a fun read sitting on the shelf. This book took me extra time and extra work to finish - not that that is a bad thing. I think I started it at Christmas and finished it at Easter. Whew. Many details. So, if you have some free mind-space and some time to read it, have at it. Otherwise, start it on June first and figure it is summer reading. I do read multiple books at the same time, and there is work to do, etc.... So, what's it about? You know alternative realities, other-worlds, fun non-science based ways of tweaking existence. It's all good in the end. I gave it a B+, all in all.