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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
I know this book is very popular but I couldn't get into it. I found it a bit confusing, to be honest. And no idea how certain B stories fit together. It felt less like a "ahh everything is connected" and more of "B stories just doing a forced cameo at the end". Perhaps it was trying to set up a universe for sequels?
Douglas Adams does it again. Better review later.
Ghosts, aliens, Electric Monks, and a sofa stuck in the stairway- sounds like a typical Douglas Adams story. I prefer the Hitchhiker saga, but this wasn't bad.
Food: Steak fries. I prefer shoestring fries, but all fries are good. Steak fries are good for awhile, until they get cold, and then they're okay. This story had yummy parts and parts that were a little soggy.
Food: Steak fries. I prefer shoestring fries, but all fries are good. Steak fries are good for awhile, until they get cold, and then they're okay. This story had yummy parts and parts that were a little soggy.
Probably best to already be a Douglas Adams fan before trying this one. You have to appreciate his absurdity and accept that much of the story won't make sense in the traditional way of a novel. Parts of this are pretty darned hilarious, and the characters are memorable.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This is such a fun little romp by Douglas Adams that I can't help but keep going with the Dirk Gently books.
It was confusing, re-reading this for the first time since I was 11 or 12, because nothing in the book seemed familiar. Everything I remember about Dirk Gently must have come from the second book. This book... is just not very good. It has a handful of interesting ideas and clever lines but it desperately needs an editor.
The first half rambles on with overlong chapters that introduce characters who are then promptly forgotten about for hundreds of pages. Bizarrely, the title character doesn't even show up until halfway through the book. The ending is frankly incoherent and rushed - it very much feels like Adams figured he had written enough pages for a novel so he should just wrap things up. Weirdly, some of the most interesting parts of the story happen "off-page". It's like a low-budget movie where a character shows up and describes a scene that would be too expensive to shoot.
Douglas Adams was a formative author for me as a kid so I hate to slag off one of his books, especially one that at its core has the potential to be quite good, but the first Dirk Gently book is too sloppy to be anything more than ok.
From the title you also might expect the book to be Adams doing for detective tropes what Hitchhikers did for sci-fi. Nope. There's little to no actual detecting going on here. Gently is the kind of detective who just inexplicably and conveniently figures things out and explains them to everybody else when the plot needs to move along.
The first half rambles on with overlong chapters that introduce characters who are then promptly forgotten about for hundreds of pages. Bizarrely, the title character doesn't even show up until halfway through the book. The ending is frankly incoherent and rushed - it very much feels like Adams figured he had written enough pages for a novel so he should just wrap things up. Weirdly, some of the most interesting parts of the story happen "off-page". It's like a low-budget movie where a character shows up and describes a scene that would be too expensive to shoot.
Douglas Adams was a formative author for me as a kid so I hate to slag off one of his books, especially one that at its core has the potential to be quite good, but the first Dirk Gently book is too sloppy to be anything more than ok.
From the title you also might expect the book to be Adams doing for detective tropes what Hitchhikers did for sci-fi. Nope. There's little to no actual detecting going on here. Gently is the kind of detective who just inexplicably and conveniently figures things out and explains them to everybody else when the plot needs to move along.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked his Hitchhiker's Guide but this one just isn't holding up. The humor in this book tended towards the "random XD" style of the past decade (Adams was ahead of his time in a lot of ways!), even more so than in Hitchhiker.
The story meandered around .. and around .. and around before getting to any sort of plot and it got a little tedious.
Still, it was pretty enjoyable so I'll give it 3 stars.
The story meandered around .. and around .. and around before getting to any sort of plot and it got a little tedious.
Still, it was pretty enjoyable so I'll give it 3 stars.