#Tomighty portable portable
The Portable Door design, consisting of a crude outline of a door, an identical pasted copy of the same, and a wavering arrow between them, is credited to mighty publishing director Tim Holman. Wells book, Earth, Air, Fire and Custard (2005), has cover non-art by my own editor at Orbit, Darren Nash. At last I noticed that these are variously bylined, mostly with unfamiliar names: staff members or their small children? Another J.W. The current Orbit UK packaging of Holt's comic fantasies uses plain cream-coloured covers with faux-inept or maybe just inept "child's scribble" drawings. The Portable Door has been several times reprinted, though, and there's a bunch of sequels, so no doubt I'm just a grumpy minority.
As usual there are plenty of good lines en route, but the setup and development seemed too generally shambolic to hook me. He finally connects with, or has his nose rubbed in, the relevant song in the last chapter when all the comic Sturm und Drang is over. Carpenter is incredibly slow to catch on despite being presented with a book of Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics (which he doesn't read) and getting forcibly steered to a performance of The Sorcerer (which he nevertheless contrives to miss). Most readers will glean a rough idea of the company's activities from that name and address alone. Here the typically gormless Holt hero Paul Carpenter applies for a job and – to general surprise all round – is recruited. Tom Holt, The Portable Door (2003), opening a loosely connected series about the mysterious firm J.W.
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