Product Description

There are all kinds of products. The good ones. The bad ones. The ones that stay in the garage mouldering for years until your garden gnome makes a home out of them. 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 backtalked 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 defence, 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114492 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
'Inventively entertaining...make you both laugh out loud and stop and think' SFX, Praise forTom Holt: 'Wacky humour bubbles through the polished narrative ... Holt doesn't skimp on the flashes of brilliance' SFX, 'Uniquely twisted ... cracking gags' Rob Grant, The Guardian, 'Frantically wacky and wilfully confusing ... gratifyingly clever and very amusing' Mail on Sunday, 'Frothy, fast and funny' Scotland on Sunday, 'Dazzling' Time Out

About the Author
Tom Holt is the author of more than twenty comic fantasy novels and a number of acclaimed historical novels.

Customer Reviews

Amazing read!
Meet Chris Popham, a salesman miserable with his lot. He's been in a long term relationship with Karen, a girl he knew from school he went on the rebound with that never ended when Karen's best mate Jill turned him down. Still in love with her, Chris meets up with Jill once a week, and wishes things were different. He's not too happy with his job either, trying his hardest to sell magical products such a portable parking space, powdered water, and instaglamour cream, and not having the best of luck with it.

Then his SatNav starts talking to him, and everything changes. A trainee, Angela, is lumbered on him to show the ropes, and demons start showing up. In his car. They're after the One who is to Come, but he has no idea who she is, and why he's involved in it all. Soon he starts wishing his life was back the way it was before, but no such luck. Just who is the One who is to Come? What do the demons want with her? Why are the demons showing up where Chris goes? And why on earth is his SatNav talking to him?

Wow. Just wow. This book is awesome! Tom Holt is a British author, and it's obvious from the writing. Such a typical British voice, and British humour! I giggled out loud on more than one occasion reading this book, it was just fantastic!

The characters in this book are great, but none match up to Chris. He's just so sarcastic and simple, and sometimes annoying, but you can't help but feel for him when his crappy life is turned upside down, and is genuinely flabbergasted at everything going on around him. He doesn't know what to do, and makes mistakes more than once, but you can't blame him. I can't really go into too much detail without spoiling things, but he's just adorable - a bit like an abandoned dog.

The plot of this book is just brilliant! You never know how things are going to turn out, who's telling the truth and who's lying, and just what will happen next. You find yourself trying to figure things out along with Chris, but then another disaster will happen, and your back to square one when more things are put in front of you to think about. It's mind boggling until the very end, and then everything makes sense. It's just such a fantastically written, and pretty damn funny book, with such an amazing plot. I highly recommend this book, it's just so awesome!

May induce fits of laughter
With effortless wit, Holt introduces the reader to another world where the underlying mechanics and physics of how the world works is closer to that of myth and fairytale, and only marginally more unreliable than the real world we know. For Chris Popham, a travelling salesman and amiable loser seeking to impress customers into buying a wider range of JWW magical products than the inexplicably popular DW6 dried water ("just add..."), there's always the risk of a malfunctioning product like the instant car-park space trapping him in another dimension. Not to mention the trouble with Demons. All fine and dandy when they're held in objects like a SatNav kept secure by protective charms, but Chris has been encountering a lot of rather more dangerous ones while out on his rounds, and wonders if it has anything to do with his friendship with Jill, a high-ranking official at Demon Control in the Department of Metaphysics, the new work placement student tagging along with him, or the entity in his SatNav with whom he has formed a dangerously close relationship.

It's the typical Tom Holt one-remove-from-reality that makes May Contain Traces of Magic great fun, with its juxtaposition of mild-mannered fools, looking only for a quiet life getting inadvertently mixed up in fabric of the universe business. Even if I were to tell you who was the troublemaking Demon ruining Chris's miserable but comfortable life, Holt delights in constantly shifting realities to the extent that you're never sure what the truth is. Despite pushing the situation a little too far past its limits in this respect with unnecessary complexity, the story and Holt's writing remains consistently entertaining.

Holt Gold
The latest novel from Tom Holt sees a new branch of JWW in this offering that really does keep on ticking the boxes for the reader. Whilst occasionally his writing loses it a bit on subsequent novels featuring the same characters each crisp new adventure really will tick the readers boxes. You want levity? Yep. You want a twisted plot? Yep. You want a believable character who's about as clued in as you and I? Yep. Definitely a lot of fun and continues the success of others in the series. If you haven't read The Portable Door then make that your must purchase for next week. You'll laugh, you'll route for the hero and above all you'll become a fan of Tom's work.