Nothing But Blue Skies - Tom Holt

   2001; 317 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : British Humour; Humorous Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    It rains a lot in England.  Most people believe the “official” explanations that it has to do with storm fronts, high- and low-pressure systems, global warming, and whatnot.

 

    Some freethinkers, otherwise known as conspiracy nuts, say they know the real cause: Weathermen.  Weathermen magically predict downpours, and storms inevitably follow.

 

    A few of those conspiracy nuts believe in an even deeper conspiracy: Dragons.  They say that dragons cause rainstorms when they get excited.  That sound like a bunch of hogwash to me.  But hey, maybe we can make it finally stop raining by forcing all those storm-causing weathermen to make nicer forecasts.

 

    After that, it'll be Nothing But Blue Skies.

 

What’s To Like...

    Nothing But Blue Skies is set in various locations in England, but all roads eventually lead to Canberra, Australia.  The book's written in English, not American, so besides the usual weird spellings, us Yanks have to suss out words and phrases such as skiving off, widdling, razzle, poxy, naff, and the mysterious acronym JCB.  As always, I loved this.

 

    The dragons have some unique features, such as being able to shapeshift into human and fish forms at will.  Alas, those apparently are the only body-switches they can make and there are certain limitations.  I had fun trying to figure out which characters are really humans and which ones are dragons in drag.

 

    As with any Tom Holt book, Nothing But Blue Skies has lots of absurdities, including Applied Metaphysics and Transdimensional Badminton and the organization Meteorologists Against Dragons.  You’ll learn the answer to “What made England great”, and there’s even a love triangle of sorts for those who like a bit of Romance mixed into the tales they read.

 

    The storyline switches around among three plot threads.  Karen, a dragon, is searching for her missing father; another dragon is stuck in a fishbowl (not a spoiler, see the cover image above); and two weathermen, Neville and Gordon, are debating with each other whether dragons are, or are not, responsible for the soggy weather.

 

    All the plotlines converge on a showdown ending.  You can see it coming, but Tom Holt infuses it with several surprises that startle both the reader and the main characters.  Things are resolved in a pleasing manner, albeit not a very exciting one.  Nothing But Blue Skies is a standalone novel, and AFAIK not related to any of Tom Holt’s other series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 84 ratings and 14 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.73/5 based on 973 ratings and 39 reviews.

 

 

Excerpts...

    “Come on.  Or I’ll leave you here.”

    Gordon thought about it for a moment.  On one hand, he really didn’t like the thought of getting out of there because Neville had been able to decipher a secret access code using his third eye.  On the other hand . . . as the old adage goes, if you’re starving in the desert and a headless skeleton riding a winged fiery camel swoops down out of thin air and hands you a cheeseburger, eat the cheeseburger.

    “Coming,” he said.  (loc.2354)

 

    Imagine Manchester.  Sorry, had you just eaten?  Let’s try a gentler approach.  Imagine a place where it rains all the time.  Imagine a place where baths are for drying off in, where you fill a kettle by holding it out of the window for a second and a half, where the current in the gutters is strong enough to turn hydroelectric turbines, where they thought Waterworld was a documentary, where Noah fortunately didn’t send out his doves (or he’d be sailing yet), where even the privatised water companies can only manage to cause a hosepipe ban one year in three.  (loc. 3678)

 

Kindle Details…

    Nothing But Blue Skies sells for $3.99 at Amazon right now.   Tom Holt has more than a dozen other fantasy e-books for your reading pleasure, ranging in price from $2.99 to $9.99.  At times, he also uses the pseudonym of K.J. Parker to write his fantasy novels, but I haven’t yet read any of those to see just what the difference is.

 

“I’m a scientist, dammit.  Trying to bore me to death is like trying to drown a fish in water.”  (loc. 2134)

    There are some things to nitpick about in Nothing But Blue Skies.

 

    There’s a moderate amount of cussing: I noted 14 instances in the first 10% of the book.  There were also more typos than I expected in the e-book version: Bfore/Before, acidentally/accidentally, off/of, and the S’sssn/S’ssssn variations of the name of one of the dragons.  Autocorrect went nutso with that last one.

 

    Tom Holt’s writing is superb, as it always is; but the storytelling seemed to dawdle at times.  To be fair, I read this while traveling, so it’s possible my brain was a bit fried.

 

    Overall, the author’s literary skills save Nothing But Blue Skies.  There may be some slow spots, but at least the reader has Tom Holt’s witty writing to make this an enjoyable read.  If you’ve never read any of the author’s novels, don’t make this your introduction to him.  But veteran Holt fans will still find this a solid effort.

 

    7 Stars.  Nothing But Blue Skies was my twenty-second Tom Holt book, and I have find any of his novels boring.  I have a few more on my bookshelf/Kindle and Amazon informs me his next one, The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse, is due to be released this coming October.  I await it eagerly.