It's a really fun classic Tom Holt book. The premise is interesting, even though some of the characters do feel that they weren't 100% consistent in their actions across the book. It has some good jokes and funny moments in there which definitely made it a fun, if shallow read.

When I requested this book, I completely missed the fact that it is the 8th book in the series (a series that is on my TBR, by the way) but this wasn’t a problem, at all. I don’t know if things would have been a little less weird if I followed the order of the series, but this book is Weird, and strange is a given, so maybe it would have helped a bit because maybe you would have known the characters from previous books, sure, but I don’t think it is necessary. If you want to read the strangest Christmas book ever, you should just give this one a try.
Okay, okay, this is not a Christmas book. At all. But Santa is there! And he is one of the characters, not the main one, sure, but he is pretty present (and you won’t watch Santa with the same eyes anymore, after reading this one!). So… if you want to see Santa as you have never seen him before, try this book out!

Other than that… it’s pretty hard to talk about this book because it’s bonkers! And I am saying this in the best possible way, this book is so damn cute in its weirdness, and strangeness, it is a delight! And if you think that these things can work for you, this will be an amazing entry for your collection!

Absurdist humour. The team of sorcerers at Dawson, Ahriman & Dawson are looking for a new recruit to take over the job of supreme being of a world in an alternate universe. Maybe the fat bearded chap who knows a lot about reindeer and jingle bells isn’t the right candidate for the job. Or maybe he is. Dawson (both of him) is in debt to Ahriman. Mt Sunshine is a soft touch and has a bottomless purse which doesn’t (can’t) exist. Mr Teasedale has booked a team of demons for a specific job… And then there’s Harmondsworth who seems to manifest as a blue light or a flash Pentecostal fire. I should have expected this from Tom Holt, but it’s a long time since I read any of his books. I’ve been missing out. This is weird, surreal, quirky and fantastically imaginative.

Not my first Tom Holt book but I discovered that he's also K. J. Parker, I'm a bit unobservant.
That said I had a lot of fun as it's fast paced, full of humour and witty moments
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Hilarious and I hope accurately educational as i'm now using the dark history of Father Christmas as a Babylonian thunder god to annoy the hell out of my family

The Wells and Co series isn't my favourite Tom Holt, but this one certainly filled the gap till the next Saevus Corax is out.
I must admit, like a lot of the Wells' series, it left me oft confused (for one thing, the only connection to Christmas is that the Jolly Man is looking for a job as god to another planet) - but I treat Holt like a great magician. I don't want to know how the trick is done, I just strap in and enjoy the ride. In this case, the shenanigans they go through to save the world (again), but mostly Holt's prose, his effortless sarcasm and witticisms and barbed truths.
If I'm completely honest, though, did there need to be three main, male characters with names all starting with T? I'm fairly sure that's in there on Day One of writing school.
But still. Some of the best humour around, will definitely re-read.
My thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for this ARC.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The plot is absolute bogus, the characters are incompetent idiots, and magic is explained with physics while physics are explained by magic. All of the above comes off very funny for some reason, and I laughed at it loudly on multiple occasions.

The characters were realistic, in a sense that no matter how much power they had, or what opportunities they were given, at the end of the day they all made distinctively human decisions.
<spoiler>Santa and Ahriman considering themselves gods even though they could not do anything when divine intervention was needed. Jenny being concerned about trivial things when the world around her was ending. Consuela was considering taking a position she always dreamed of even after realising she's not qualified for it.</spoiler>

The last scene was the cherry on top of the sundae but in general, i enjoyed every little pop culture reference!

This was my first meeting with the works of Tom Holt, so I was a bit worried that I might find his sense of humour too dense or artificial, which happens often with me and books that are labelled 'funny'. The style (and, okay, the setting too) reminded me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is very high praise in my opinion.

Absolutely recommended to fans of Christopher Moore, and Douglas Adams.

I love this author, his books are just completely incredible and insane.
This is no different, if not more so! It’s almost impossible to review without spoiling, all I can say is nothing is quite what you’d expect and magic is very real. As are the Gods (plural) and it’s best not to upset them. This is a madcap adventure to save the world from an upset deity and I loved it.

I hadn't read a Tom Holt novel for years, so when the chance came up to read an advance copy of "The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse" it felt like Christmas came early (see what I did there?!). This book is a lot of fun, but I think I probably missed out by not having read the previous J. W. Wells books. It's still an entertaining and enjoyable read though.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

I think if you are a fan of Tom Holt, then this would get a higher rating. I’d never read anything by this author and I can see why people like his stuff and I *kind of* found it amusing in quite a mild way. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

When a photographer goes to see Mr Teasdale about an extra person who keeps cropping up in her photos, he realises that this isn't normal, which is to be expected when Dawson, Ahriman and Dawson are involved. When a vengeful woman is aiming her asteroid at earth with the intention of wiping out life, something needs to be done. That proves easier said than done when Mr Teasdale's ex wife gets herself involved.
Hugely entertaining and laugh out loud funny.

This was my first book by Tom Holt and I was attracted by the comparison to Terry Pratchett - unfortunately that didn't quite stand up for my but the fault there is mine (why should there be another Terry Pratchett rather than a first Tom Holt?) I enjoyed it, much of it was funny (especially as it went on) but I found it a bit too office based and the characters didn't particularly appeal. I'm sure fans will love it though and it was a very impressive joke rate.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy in return for an honest review.
#TheEightReindeeroftheApocalypse #NetGalley

Tom Holt does it again. Humour abounds in this apocalyptic story of professional fixers fixing! But since these fixers have god like skills their clients and the world are in safe hands. Yeah, right - definitely not!!!!! Thank you to Little, Brown Book Group Uk and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

Worth it just for title alone. To quote Monty Python "this is silly" but in the best possible way. Just a fun and weird adventure

Yet again another funny book by this author, story was told well and the characters were a delight to interact with albeit in the written word

I'd say part of what attracted me to this book were the reviews suggesting it was like Pratchett. It's not. Another part was the idea of it being about a twist on Santa and his Reindeer. It's not. Reviewers said it was funny. It is in very small parts. In fact all my preconceptions were wrong.

So if I understood it (and I'm not too sure I did), The story is that some unsuspecting person is given a package which then informs the staff at Dawson, Ahriman and Dawson that the world is going to be destroyed by a comet. There's a sub-story about the search for a new god for a planet (which is where Santa sporadically appears as a candidate). The staff at DAD then spend the rest of the book trying to find a solution to the comet problem.

I didn't laugh at anything until we'll past halfway. There are some funny bits but they're outweighed by the overly convoluted plot, the huge list of characters, the zipping about from offices, locations and supernatural goings on that make your head spin.

One thing that really grated was the constant guessing game of who's behind the comet? You'll never guess. No I won't so tell me instead of drawing it out. Then once thar mystery was solved we had another one - guess who that person is married to? Guess who their brother is? Guess who can save us?

All the rhetorical questions might have made more sense had this been a long running series - you know, like finding out who Luke's dad was in Star Wars. However these characters had zero history so finding put the truth meant nothing.

You'll gather I was disappointed by this book but as I say there are some good bits but, for me, the rest of it outweighed them.

Thanks anyway to Netgalley and Little Brown for the advance review copy.

Tom Holt does it again! He is so amazingly talented and his wry, dry with shines through yet again. Another fantastic read that left me wanting more.

Knowing Tom Holt mostly from his pseudonymous, semi-serious historical fantasties as KJ Parker, The Eight Reindeer of The Apocalypse is a departure...and yet totally in character. Much of this is to the good, especially the focus on Hitchhiker's-esque madcap antics instead of pastiches of the ancient world, but Reindeer's wild ride is sometimes encumbered by ramshackle plotting and a serious shortage of Santa.

What Reindeer is actually about is law office comedy, the office in question being the worryingly titled sorcerer's firm of Dawson, Ahriman and Dawson. And as a (non-legal) professional services peon myself, it was hard not to enjoy workplace scenes that felt painfully familiar — the constant low-grade politicking and sniping, the iron law that the smallest rooms always attract the most people — but hyperbolic enough to be cathartic. It's a book whose concluding rant is about the office world's disrespect for competent introverts, what's not to love?

The emphasis is very much on the jokes though, which Holt fires off in full automatic. The wit's often sharp, but the sheer density of quips means we sometimes descend to references for references' sake; cf. I Can't Believe It's Not Smeagol verifying digital banking logins. But even amidst the throwaway gags, there's clearly some genuine thought (and likely real-life experience) behind Reindeer's picture of the firm, with its unsteady internal balance of power and almost-familial blend of irritation and affection.

Unfortunately we need bits outside the office for there to be a story, and those bits occasionally feel as tacked-on as that sounds. We start with a MacGuffin and a dame to kick off the case, but both are forgotten about for a good two thirds of the book before popping back up to have their threads tied off hastily by the anticlimactic finale. Santa and the titular world-ending threat also show up at times for intergalactic hijinks and plot advancement, but you'd be forgiven for expecting they'd get a bit more page time from the title. Of course, much of the joke is how petty Reindeer's various gods, world spirits and demons are and how little they actually accomplish, but the "main story" still comes across a shaggy B plot alongside the office drama.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the one non-Dawson character we spend much time with is one of Holt's stock characters, the no-nonsense, romantically-unavailable and slightly grasping Type A female lead. Here she's a powerful but overambitious sorceress named Consuela, but she shares 90%+ of her DNA with at least five other Holt/Parker women I've read about. And like most of them, she has strong — and in this case literal — ex-wife energy, laced with a bitterness that's missing from the admittedly-caustic satire Holt sprinkles on others. Indeed, it's hard not to notice Consuela's pretty much the only one really punished by the end for her ambition, or that the main villainess (epithet: "stupid woman") is an irrational ex-wife. In the author's defense, Consuela evokes a definite real life type (I know one!), the hyper-competent machina of the story's deus ex ending is very much female, and creepy/patronising male behaviour is slapped down elsewhere with extreme prejudice. But I really, really wish Holt could write a book centered on a different female POV for once. For Christmas, maybe.

The comparison to Douglas Adams on the cover is what drew me in and was entirely deserved. Smart, satirical humour at its finest.

It's for fans of Tom Holt and new readers alike. A bit absurdist, a bit fantasy, very funny! I can't help thinking about Pratchett when reading Holt. Perfect read nearing christmas, as it's Santa helping out this time!