The
charm of Tom Holt's novels is very much in his
attribution of
realistic or
familiar personalities to mythical characters. In his books, gods swear at the weather or complain about
traffic,
magic doesn't always work properly, and the greatest
law is
Murphy's. Several of his books (
Flying Dutch and
Expecting Someone Taller, for example) take mythological stories and ask what it would be like if they were still going on today, or where did the gods go? (This is somewhat like what
Douglas Adams did with
Norse mythology in
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.)
Tom Holt has also written two novels set in ancient Greece (The Walled Orchard and Goatsong) and extended EF Benson's Lucia series.