History Creator / TomHolt

* ''Falling Sideways'' (2002)

* BalefulPolymorph: In ''Falling Sideways'' many, many characters get turned into frogs. Or made to think they're frogs. Or made to seem like frogs to others. Or various combinations. Sometimes frogs get turned into people, which, for the super-intelligent alien frogs in the story actually pretty much counts as this trope. There's a lot of frogs.
* BewitchedAmphibians: In ''Falling Sideways'', intelligent alien frogs who came to Earth long ago have the [[SufficientlyAdvancedTechnology power]] to make themselves seem human, and to make humans appear and act like frogs. The prince isn't ''really'' a frog, but the ''princess'' is!

* JailBake: Inverted in ''Falling Sideways'': Someone hides a cake in a file. As in, a file folder. It was entirely for the sake of the pun.

* LoopholeAbuse: The alien race in ''Falling Sideways'' have a ''very'' clear rule about ThouShaltNotKill. They do ''not'' have a very clear rule about Thou Shalt Not Make People Believe Themselves To Be Frogs And Therefore Starve To Death On An Unsuitable Diet.
* LoveBeforeFirstSight: how ''Falling Sideways'' starts.

* RulesLawyer: An entire alien race in ''Falling Sideways''. They managed to rip a gargantuan [[LoopholeAbuse loophole]] in ThouShaltNotKill.

* ThouShallNotKill: An alien race in ''Falling Sideways'' had this as a rule. They also had a very high level of technology and the collective mindset of a RulesLawyer. As in, it's OK to make people believe themselves to be frogs and eat nothing but flies, because they have a rule saying "ThouShaltNotKill" but not "Thou Shalt Not Make People Feed Themselves Horribly Inadequate Diets".

* UnreliableExpositor: Practically every book has at least one of these, often several, outrageously contradicting each other. ''Falling Sideways'' is probably the worst about this: fortunately it's all sorted out when one character points at the sky causing giant fiery words to appear: ''Yes, this is the real world, it's all true. Regards, God.''

* WimpFight: ''Falling Sideways'' has the main character get into a fight with another man on a UFO. Following both of them making asses of themselves and falling around, the non-protagonist one is defeated when he ''slides into the wall and knocks himself out''. The narration actually lampshades how balanced it was, with neither having any meaningful ability to hurt the other.

* ZigZaggingTrope: The entire point of ''Falling Sideways''. The description of the backstory of the major players is revised, revisited and completely contradicted every two or three chapters, and keeping track of all the lies (and trying to fit it into the events of the book) becomes a big brain-hurting exercise. It doesn't help that, at the end, there's still plenty of huge Plot Holes.

* CatUpATree: The magical pest exterminator LoveInterest's first appearance in''The Better Mousetrap'' has her being employed to rescue a cat from a tree. When she breaks her neck, TheHero (who is employed to save her life to prevent an insurance company from paying out) ends up playing a brief game of XanatosSpeedChess with a magical device known as a Better Mousetrap, which keeps finding new ways to get her killed.

* RetCon: Ricky Wurmtoter, revealed to be over a thousand years old in ''Earth, Air, Fire & Custard'' had a twenty-something sister in ''In Your Dreams'' who is promptly forgotten about.

* {{Calvinball}}: In ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf?'', two imps have spent the past thousand years playing "Goblin's Teeth". They're still on their first game. Descriptions of the gameplay suggest it contains elements of chess, Monopoly, Scrabble and several others.
* CantYouReadTheSign: ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf?'' had some Vikings encountering the many signs on the London Underground escalators, and are almost stumped by the one saying "Dogs must be carried". Thankfully, they have a {{shapeshifter}}.

* CirclingMonologue: In ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf?'', the last Viking king, Hrolf Earthstar, circles the evil Sorcerer King before battle, determined to break his attempt to rule the world. Unusually, the mighty but doomed villain accepts the Last Second Chance given by the hero. After all, someone could have got killed.

* IHaveManyNames: In ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf'' King Hrolf gains much needed time by asking his antagonist his name. The Sorceror King can't resist reeling off a Tolkienesque list of names and titles that just enough time for Hrolf's plan to work.

* KingInTheMountain: Played for laughs in ''WhosAfraidOfBeowulf?'' in which Viking King Hrolf of Caithness (god forsaken country--but it is my kingdom) and his band of heroes are disinterred in time to put an end to their ancient enemy, the Sorceror King's, attempt to take over the modern world via magic--or as we call it, technology.

* ShinyNewAustralia: In ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf'', the Big Bad offers someone China as a bribe for his assistance.

* TrafficWardens: In ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf?'', the heroes find their vehicle has been clamped while they were in the museum. The king responds to this by drawing his sword and cutting the clamps off. All bystanders cheer.

* Expecting Someone Taller (1987)
* Who's Afraid of Beowulf? (1988)
* Flying Dutch (1991)
* Ye Gods! (1992)
* Overtime (1993)
* Here Comes the Sun (1993)
* Grailblazers (1994)
* Faust Among Equals (1994)
* Odds & Gods (1995)
* Djinn Rummy (1995)
* My Hero (1996)
* Paint Your Dragon (1996)
* Open Sesame (1997)
* Wish You Were Here (1998)
* Only Human (1999)
* Snow White and the Seven Samurai (1999)
* Valhalla (2000)
* Nothing But Blue Skies (2001)
* Falling Sideways (2002)
* Little People (2002)
* Someone Like Me (2006)
* Barking (2007)

* The Portable Door (2003)
* In Your Dreams (2004)
* Earth, Air, Fire, and Custard (2005)
* You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps (2006)
* The Better Mousetrap (2008)
* May Contain Traces of Magic (2009)

* The Walled Orchard (1997)
* Alexander At The World's End (1999)
* Olympiad (2000)
* Song for Nero (2003)
* Meadowland (2005)

* Lucia in Wartime (1985)
* Lucia Triumphant (1986)

Tom Holt is a British author whose works can be described as comic urban fantasy mixed with {{Fractured Fairy Tale}}s. Most of his books are standalone, but he has a short series centering around the J.W. Wells Corporation (named after the sorcerer in the GilbertAndSullivan musical ''TheSorcerer'').

!!!The J.W. Wells and Co. Series:

* AbhorrentAdmirer: A variant in the ''J. W. Wells & Co'' series: Rosie Tanner, who plays this kind of role to Paul Carpenter. She's a ''goblin''. However, she does have the ability to shapeshift into a beautiful young human woman. It's just that Paul can't forget her real form, and she's also the mother of his sadistic boss.
* ActionSurvivor: Pretty much every one of his heroes, but especially Paul Carpenter from the ''J.W. Wells'' trilogy - [[spoiler: halfway through book two, he turns out to be TheChosenOne,]] but it doesn't really help at all.

* AttendingYourOwnFuneral: Paul Carpenter pulls this in book three of the ''J. W. Wells'' series... after faking a ''relapse'' of death. Considering that he died something like three times per book and usually recovered by the next chapter, this is hardly surprising.

* BalefulPolymorph:
** In ''Falling Sideways'' many, many characters get turned into frogs. Or made to think they're frogs. Or made to seem like frogs to others. Or various combinations. Sometimes frogs get turned into people, which, for the super-intelligent alien frogs in the story actually pretty much counts as this trope. There's a lot of frogs.
** In the ''J.W. Wells'' trilogy, the standard punishment for betraying the firm is [[spoiler: being turned into office supplies. You retain some measure of sapience.]]

* ComicallyMissingThePoint: ''Earth, Air, Fire and Custard'' describes it thus:
-->''Missing the point with all the futile diligence of a blind machine-gunner."

* ContinuityDrift: In the first ''J.W. Wells & Co'' novel, using the eponymous Portable Door for more than an hour is incredibly draining, with potential risk to the user's life. By ''May Contain Traces of Magic'', a character has pretty much relocated to his past (our present) using said Door, and isn't even remotely drained.

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: In the ''J.W. Wells'' series, many of the members of the board of executives of the eponymous company are like this, and since the company supplies magical services to anyone able to pay enough, the members of the company often have supernatural powers themselves. Both [[MadScientist Professor van Spee]] and [[TheFairFolk Judy di Castel'bianco]] try to take over the world before being neutralized by the hero, and Dennis Tanner is universally regarded as a highly unscrupulous jerk, though not as evil as some of his colleagues. The latest book, ''The Better Mousetrap'' features another corrupt executive from a rival company, who has people killed on a regular basis until [[spoiler: she is sent back in time and her magical abilities are neutralized.]]

* DangerousWorkplace: In the ''J.W. Wells'' series, the firm of J. W. Wells and Co. might seem like a great advancement opportunity - but that assumes you live long enough to advance. And don't wind up transformed into a piece of office equipment.

* FantasyKitchenSink: several novels, and the continuity in general, but particularly the JW Wells series.

* FutureBadass: Paul Carpenter encounters a badass swordsman version of himself in ''Earth, Fire, Air and Custard''--the end of the plot of that book was so convoluted it's hard to tell, and he never finds out for sure, but there's a good chance said version of Paul existed because a Canadian bank tried to change history to make Canada a major world power.

* GreatBigBookOfEverything: ''May Contain Traces of Magic'' features a Book of Human Knowledge which is mass-produced by the sorcerous corporation J.W. Wells and co. However, the book only shows the viewer what he or she ''needs'' to know at the time, not what that person specifically wants to look up, unless you know the cheat codes.

** The Paul Carpenter series features a she-goblin who shapeshifts into a different beautiful human girl every day and tries to hit on the main character. She mentions that lots of goblin girls like to have flings with humans, and that as shapeshifters, they are open-minded and don't care much about appearances.

* MrsRobinson: In the ''J.W. Wells'' books, Rosie, the mother of Mr. Tanner (one of the partners of the J.W. Wells firm) has a thing for young human men, and constantly flirts with the Hapless Everydude character of Paul Carpenter. However, as she is a goblin with the ability to shapeshift into a variety of beautiful young human women, the age and species difference is not apparently obvious unless she reverts to her true form. She gets some of the funniest lines in the books and shows a manipulative streak worthy of a MagnificentBastard, though she schemes for fun and mischief rather than an end goal. However, she is somewhat sympathetic as she is the only character who looks out for Paul and tries to help him in dangerous situations.
* MundaneAfterlife: In some ways, the afterlife featured in the ''J.W.Wells'' books by Creator/TomHolt is not at all mundane, being an empty white expanse. However, considering the only activities that take place there are classes in basket weaving and intermediate Spanish, it probably counts.

* ThePowerOfLove:
** In ''The Portable Door'', the only way to get [[spoiler:the swords out of the stones to get a hold of the keys on the end]] is to have two people who are in love pulling them.
** An even more bizarre version comes from ''You Don't Have to be Evil to Work Here''. Screwing with True Love actually causes [[spoiler:''the entire Universe'' to go a bit out of whack, and maths stops working properly]].

* ReleasedToElsewhere: In ''In Your Dreams'', the second book of the ''J.W. Wells'' series, Paul Carpenter doesn't spend the whole book trying to rescue his girlfriend Sophie because he [[IdiotBall genuinely believes]] she's been reassigned to an office in Los Angelos, left without saying goodbye, and broke up with him via a letter. Not quite this trope because he does manage to rescue her before she actually dies.

* SawAWomanInHalf: In ''The Portable Door'', the head of a firm of (real) magicians does this to the assistant of a business rival at his son's birthday party. He then explains to his competitor that he'll leave her to die if he doesn't get his way.

* SickeninglySweethearts: Parodied in one of the ''J. W. Wells & co.'' novels, where a bickering couple are tricked into overdosing on love potion. They start using pet names at the end of every sentence but retain their normal personalities, leading to sentences like, "Don't be such a bloody idiot, honey-bunny".

** The goblins in the ''J.W. Wells'' books can shift instantaneously into any human form, although whether they can take other forms has not been mentioned. The vainer goblins in the series, such as Rosie Tanner, enjoy transforming into a different supermodel-gorgeous human every day, wearing bodies the way some Hollywood film stars wear clothes -- always the best, and never the same outfit twice. It is emphasized that while goblins actually change the structure of their bodies, other creatures like the Fey prefer the simpler methods of glamour and illusion, which take less magical strength than actual shapeshifting.

* WeirdnessMagnet: A great deal of his characters. For example, Paul Carpenter from the ''J.W. Wells & co.'' series. He gets a job with a major firm of unknown purpose, despite confusing [[ChekhovsGun Anton Chekhov]] with [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Pavel Chekov]]. The building seems to reshape itself more or less at random, the stapler will disappear across the building if you put it down for two seconds (even if you're the only one in the room and the door is locked), new employees are left to sort graph printouts that have been scrambled and draw circles around anything on an aerial photograph that looks like a bauxite deposit, and claw marks and sinister glowing eyes appear to pop up occasionally. Paul's misadventures last for ''three'' books, all of them introducing new elements of the FantasyKitchenSink any of Holt's characters find themselves stuck in...and ''all'' of them seem to need Paul for some purpose in their great (ten-sided) game of XanatosSpeedChess. It turns out [[spoiler: he's been developed as a living weapon by a couple of blood relatives, one of whom is a) God and b) his real father, and as an additional bonus he's the reincarnation of a Norse warlord]].

* WhatYouAreInTheDark

* MagicalUnderpinningsOfReality
* {{Magitek}}

* MilkmanConspiracy: A literal milkman conspiracy as imagined by Danny Bennett, a journalist hellbent on proving that the real power behind world governments lies with... the Milk Marketing Board.

-->There's an old saying among dragons that every time a human says he doesn't believe in dragons, a human dies, and serve the cheeky bugger right.

* RetCon - Ricky Wurmtoter, revealed to be over a thousand years old in ''Earth, Air, Fire & Custard'' had a twenty-something sister in ''In Your Dreams'' who is promptly forgotten about.
* RuleOfFunny - his writing thrives on this.
* TheUnfavorite - several. The most obvious example is the protagonist Malcolm in ''Expecting Someone Taller''. Like all of Holt's male leads, Malcolm is a total git, and his parents unabashedly compare him to his super-perfect sister Bridget. Becoming the heir to practically unlimited power makes Malcolm immediately think that it was originally meant for Bridget. In fact, Malcolm's lack of self-esteem and desire to do good make him the perfect person to inherit said power; Bridget would totally mess it up.

* ZigZaggingTrope - The entire point of ''Falling Sideways''. The description of the backstory of the major players is revised, revisited and completely contradicted every two or three chapters, and keeping track of all the lies (and trying to fit it into the events of the book) becomes a big brain-hurting exercise. It doesn't help that, at the end, there's still plenty of huge Plot Holes.

* LoveBeforeFirstSight - how ''Falling Sideways'' starts.

* AMythologyIsTrue - which one depends on the novel
* NegativeContinuity - The increasingly paranoid presence of Danny Bennet suggests that most of the early comic fantasy is set in the same universe. But ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf?'' and ''Flying Dutch'' have entirely separate immortals as the inventor of computers, and there seem to be at least two incompatible Odins.

* {{Calvinball}} - In ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf?'', two imps have spent the past thousand years playing "Goblin's Teeth". They're still on their first game. Descriptions of the gameplay suggest it contains elements of chess, Monopoly, Scrabble and several others.

* FlyingDutchman - subverted in ''Flying Dutch'', where the Flying Dutchman and his crew had accidentally drunk some elixir which gave them immortality, but also the most outrageous body odour for all but one month in every 7 years. In the book, Wagner is said to have been given direct inspiration from the captain of the crew.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter - You'll never think about {{Aristophanes}} the same way again...
* JerkassGods - Loads of them, but Odin in ''Valhalla'' is arguably the worst.

* AmbulanceChaser - the werewolf lawyers in ''Barking'', quite literally.

* AuthorCatchphrase - "X appeared like a Romulan decloaking", in several novels.

* BlackAndGrayMorality - ''Paint Your Dragon'' does this to the story of Saint George and the Dragon. Both are absolute assholes, but the dragon seems a little more sympathetic...although considering he at one point annihilates an entire (occupied) theatre in an attempt to deal with George, this is more a statement on how unlikeable St. George is than anything else. [[spoiler:The dragon's status as the Least Evilâ„¢ character is cemented at the end, when the two end up switching forms and George's first action as a dragon is to kill the entire audience for their deathmatch in order to ensure that nobody with a rocket launcher is lurking in the stands).]]

* {{Deconstruction}} - Phaedra in ''The Walled Garden'' is a bit of a deconstruction of the usual Holt heroine (see description in the main paragraph) as her temper and shrewishness is portrayed as about as bearable as you might expect in real life - though she does get better. Holt also allows her to be flat out wrong on some subjects (she's a FlatEarthAtheist for instance.)

* FlyingDutchman - subverted in ''Flying Dutch'', where the Flying Dutchman and his crew had accidentally drunk some elixir which gave them immortality, but also the most outrageous body odour for all but one month in every 7 years. In the book, Wagner is said to have been given direct inspiration from the captain of the crew.

* CelestialBureaucracy - ''Here Comes The Sun'' is entirely based on this trope. For example, a complaints form consists of a pure, 24-carat gold slab several acres in area, which is filled with so much bureaucratic crap that the actual complaint needs to be chiseled in microscopic writing in a millimetre-wide spot.
* CirclingMonologue - In ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf?'', the last Viking king, Hrolf Earthstar, circles the evil Sorcerer King before battle, determined to break his attempt to rule the world. Unusually, the mighty but doomed villain accepts the Last Second Chance given by the hero. After all, someone could have got killed.
* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve - spoofed in ''Open Sesame''; a fairy provides medical care by shouting "I do believe in humans!" And again in Paint Your Dragon:

* ConspiracyTheorist - Recurring character (or possibly multiple characters with the same name) Danny Bennett is convinced that the Milk Marketing Board is somehow connected to the assassination of JFK.

* {{Deconstruction}} - Phaedra in ''The Walled Garden'' is a bit of a deconstruction of the usual Holt heroine (see description in the main paragraph) as her temper and shrewishness is portrayed as about as bearable as you might expect in real life - though she does get better. Holt also allows her to be flat out wrong on some subjects (she's a FlatEarthAtheist for instance.)
* DiabolusExMachina - A particularly cruel one in ''Little People'', leading to...
* DownerEnding - ''Little People''
* FantasyKitchenSink - several novels, and the continuity in general, but particularly the JW Wells series.
* FearlessFool

TomHolt is a British author whose works can be described as comic urban fantasy mixed with {{Fractured Fairy Tale}}s. Most of his books are standalone, but he has a short series centering around the J.W. Wells Corporation (named after the sorcerer in the GilbertAndSullivan musical ''TheSorcerer'').

* CatUpATree: The magical pest exterminator LoveInterest's first appearance in Creator/TomHolt's ''The Better Mousetrap'' has her being employed to rescue a cat from a tree. When she breaks her neck, TheHero (who is employed to save her life to prevent an insurance company from paying out) ends up playing a brief game of XanatosSpeedChess with a magical device known as a Better Mousetrap, which keeps finding new ways to get her killed.

* {{Calvinball}} - In ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf?'', two imps have spent the past thousand years playing "Goblin's Teeth". They're still on their first game. Descriptions of the gameplay suggest it contains elements of chess, Monopoly, Scrabble and several others.

* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve - spoofed in ''Open Sesame''; a fairy provides medical care by shouting "I do believe in humans!"
** And again in Paint Your Dragon:

* {{Calvinball}} - In ''Who's Afraid of Beowulf?'', two imps have spent the past thousand years playing "Goblin's Teeth". They're still on their first game. Descriptions of the gameplay suggest it contains elements of chess, Monopoly, Scrabble and several others.

* BewitchedAmphibian: In ''Falling Sideways'', intelligent alien frogs who came to Earth long ago have the [[SufficientlyAdvancedTechnology power]] to make themselves seem human, and to make humans appear and act like frogs. The prince isn't ''really'' a frog, but the ''princess'' is!