chloazo 's review for:

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

3.0

---

This book was entertaining in its language, using many frivolous details and fun turns of phrase that made the minutiae of the story enjoyable. However, the abrupt chapter endings drove me insane, especially because they almost never picked up where they left off—five or six confusing chapters later, you might reencounter the character you previously lost and find them doing something completely different than where you last left them. This made the book frustratingly volatile and opaque—a million things are happening at once, and you can only understand a bit of each piece. This would have been interesting it all came together in the end, but it didn’t—at least for me. The ending felt limp and unexplained in the bigger picture while over-focusing on details like Richard’s dinner reservation or his couch delivery. I think there were an abundance of cool ideas in this story—the electric monk, the time machine, the ghost of Gordon Way, the ghost of the alien, Michael Wenton Weakes and his vendettas—but there was not enough time spent on each to actually make anything engagingly clear. As such, I spent a lot of time confused and unhopeful that anything would be explained. Fun clever little details do abound, though.