There are all kinds of products. The good ones. The bad ones. The ones that stay in the garage moldering for years until your garden gnome makes a home out of it. Most are harmless if handled properly, even if they do contain traces of peanuts. But some are not—not the ones that contain traces of magic. Chris Popham wasn't paying enough attention when he talked to his SatNav. Sure, she gave him directions, never talked back to him, and always led him to his next spot on the map with perfect accuracy. She was the best thing in his life. So was it really his fault that he didn't start paying attention when she talked to him? In his defense, that was her job. But when "Take the next right" turned into "Excuse me," that was when the real trouble started. Because sometimes a SatNav isn't a SatNav. Sometimes it's an imprisoned soul trapped inside a metal box that will do anything it can to get free. And some products you just can't return.
May Contain Traces of Magic
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Editorial Reviews
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"A good read, one that Holt's bizarre humor and sense of detail render terrifically funny." —Booklist on In Your Dreams
"Holt has a touch that is equally breezy and serious: the story's twists and revelations feel like Douglas Adams emulating David Mamet." —Publishers Weekly on Falling Sideways
“The best similes since Douglas Adams. Buy it for heaven's sake.” —SFX on Little People
"Dazzling." —Time Out on Barking
About the Author
Tom Holt is the highly praised author of more than 20 comic fantasy novels, including Barking, Falling Sideways, and You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here but it Helps.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing,
This review is from: May Contain Traces of Magic (Hardcover)
Holt has written some excellent stuff. My thumbnail of his oeuvre: If you love Pratchett but can't find anything new of his, Holt will tide you over just fine. I really liked his Portable Door trilogy and its follow-on, Better Mousetrap--but not this. It's just too busy: Too many changes of dimension and snapping back and forth, too many entities that are more or less than they seem, too many loose threads. At the very start, a shopping bag eats a packet of biscuits. The hero and a friend ask each other, "Who ate the biscuits?" intermittently through the rest of the book, but they never find out and we never learn what animated shopping bags have to do with anything. And the hero trots out the standard line at the end, "I'm such a dunce, the answer was staring me in the face all along!" But the answer doesn't seem obvious to me at all, or inevitable--just something the author cobbled together to cover as many bases as he could before shipping it off to the publishers. I'm very sorry to write this: a very uneven, mostly unsatisfying read. Holt has done much better.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
OMG,
By Lance Mitchell (Hampshire, UK, Northern Hemisphere, Planet Earth) - See all my reviews
This review is from: May Contain Traces of Magic (Paperback)
If I was inclined to say "Oh my God!", which I am not, I would have said it over a hundred times whilst reading this book.
The story is about Chris, a salesman of magical good such as fold-away parking spaces and instant water. From the moment that he walks into the shop of one of his clients and finds the shopkeeper lying on the floor with his head mostly hacked off by a horrible demon, who is still scarily present and sitting on the top shelf observing Chris, his life falls to pieces. He has no idea who he can trust, whether they be human beings or magical beings. Transdimensional travel is commonplace, which complicates matters enormously, and confuses Chris at every turn, even when guided by his mysterious magical SatNav. To cap it all, his girlfriend, Karen, is hardly speaking to him and he is lumbered with a freshly graduated, objectionable apprentice, Angela, for his sales rounds. There is so much imaginative creativity in this story, that you can't help but enjoy it. Watch out for subtle little twists, like the reference to the copra mines of Kiribati. There is always loads of copra falling with the coconuts onto the beaches of Kiribati, but I have never heard of it being mined before! Read it and you will have a lot of fun.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining trip to the other demensions,
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This review is from: May Contain Traces of Magic (Paperback)
Tom Holt, as you may know, is a British comic writer. Published in 2009, this book is a rather recent romp into a strange place. That place is his mind. If you like irreverent, funny, non-scientific plays of fiction, you'll like this. I am writing this recommendation in order to get me to buy others of his books. You should, too.
So to my future self, I say, "Hi, Hope all is going well." To the others I say, "I hope you don't mind a little bloodshed."
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