When It's a Jar by Tom Holt

This may be part of a series. But, if it is, the series through-line seems to be the use of doughnuts as dimensional portals, and maybe some mostly-background fictional organizations. So it's not much of a series: that's what I'm saying. I didn't really notice any obvious hooks or references. I think we can all just ignore it if we want to.

When It's a Jar is a 2013 humorous fantasy novel by Tom Holt, I believe his thirty-second novel under his own name and his second book (after Doughnut, which I just alluded to) that year. Holt has also had a second career as the darker fantasy writer K.J. Parker for about twenty-five years, and has written some random other things, too (though mostly near the beginning of his career, back in the 1980s).

So he is prolific in general, and has done a lot of books like this one specifically. Well, "like" this one in that they're light adventure with a generally humorous tone in the narrative, and they have elements of mythology being real, in one way or another, as their fantasy elements. That's a pretty broad "like."

I've read a couple of Holt books, long ago, and some scattered Parker books as well. But I am nothing like an expert. I realized it had been a long time since I read "Holt," and that I should try him again since a) I'm fond of short, light books these days and 2) I've really liked the Parker stuff I have read these last couple of decades.

And this was amusing and entirely pleasant - enough that I want to find the other books about doughnuts, or maybe just random Holt, sometime soon. There might be some element of the "British phrases help sell humorous SFF to Americans" engine working here - people like me who have read a lot of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett are prone to think phrases like "luck's not a wheelbarrow; you don't want to push it" are interesting and quirky rather than (as Brits I suppose might) some dull thing Uncle Rupert says every damn day.

This is a multiple-parallel-universes book, though that's not clear for a while. The main character is Maurice, the typical completely normal, deeply boring protagonist of a humorous fantasy novel: he gets dropped into the soup when a dragon appears in his bedroom one night and he accidentally kills it with a bread knife. Of course, even before that he met three women who the reader should realize are The Fates on the London Underground, to clue us in that his life will not be normal going forward.

Maurice is being slotted into a Hero's Journey, complete with his True Love Stephanie stolen away from him and a Quest to get her (not really "back," since they were just friends from childhood) and do other, not entirely specified, heroic deeds. Meanwhile, he's lost his random horrible office job and found a new job at a deeply weird company, where he moves boxes around in a sub-basement. And there's an obnoxious man, Max, who seems to be trapped in some other-dimensional space, who keeps bugging Maurice through various communications media to first retrieve Max and then get on with his obvious heroic destiny.

Maurice, though, is that typically mostly-ineffectual, self-conscious, not particularly good at anything humorous-fantasy protagonist. Killing the dragon - actually a hydra; not nearly as violent or dangerous - was a fluke at best, and he's deeply confused about what's happening to him, what he's supposed to do, and possibly even which universe he's in.

But he is starting to think that he's in the wrong universe.

Eventually, of course, Maurice does retrieve Max - which doesn't really help anything much - and learns more about the multiverse, which is also mostly confusing. And, even later, there is a happy ending, because that's why we read light adventure novels.

I'd have liked more of Maurice's relationship with Stephanie (though she wants to be called Steve now), his supposed True Love. She's a more interesting, vibrant character than Maurice to begin with, but isn't given much to do, and we never get her point of view on their potential relationship. If I were complaining about this book, I'd point out that she's treated as a reward that he will get if he successfully navigates the plot complications, rather than as a person with preferences and motivations.

But the point of a book like this is to follow a guy who isn't quite as much of a sad sack as you initially fear, through amusing moments and humorous situations, with a sprightly tone and fun narrative asides, to his eventual triumph. And When It's a Jar delivers on all of those fronts; I read it more quickly than I expected and, as I said, want to find other things in the same vein from the author. I have to count all that as a big success, so if you're looking for a book anything like this, Holt has a long shelf-full of them to try out.