Random Book Review - The Dirk Gently Novels

Author: Douglas Adams
Released: 1987 / 1988
Format reviewed: Mass-market paperback
Pages of content: 306 / 320
Rating: 3/5 / 3/5

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul are two* nominally science-fiction novels by the late and very much missed British author, Douglas Adams.  More accurately, they are comedies with a smidge of science fiction and/or fantasy to help the absurdist humor along.  In that aspect, they are similar to Douglas's more famous Hitchhiker's series.  However, the setting is primarily on Earth in this series, and there is considerably less action.

Both of the books are called detective novels, but as such the clues are a little obscure, at least to this reader, who may not have approached the books in a sufficiently adversarial manner.  The pacing of LDTTS is the better of the two, as there are more jokes sprinkled throughout and the setup portion of the book moves a little better.  DGHDA doesn't really come alive until the last 80 pages, but it's fairly fun once it does.  Both have interesting endings, though neither are entirely satisfactory.

Overall, these are fun, readable books that anyone who enjoys either speculative fiction or British humor should consume.  They don't rise to the level of the early HHGG books, but unlike a lot of recent speculative fiction, they are easy to finish without getting frustrated.  I recommend them for anyone who doesn't have a hangup about reading only 'serious' literature.

* An partial draft of the third novel in the series was published posthumously, but I felt it inappropriate to include it here.

Random Book Review: The Wheel of Time series

Author: Robert Jordan (0-11) / Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (12-14)
Released: 1990-2013
Format reviewed: Mass-market paperback
Pages of content: 11,898 (per internet sources)
Rating: 3/5

Avid and even moderate readers of the fantasy genre are probably familiar with The Wheel of Time, a 15 books series that is one of the top 10 best-selling of all time.  It is also one of more frustrating, with the middle books being interminable slogs of padding and poor editing.  The energy of the early books leached out by book 5 or 6, and Jordan's infamously similar descriptive passages make some of the chapters feel like they were written with word processor macros.  Bringing Brandon Sanderson in to finish the series would have been a good idea even if Jordan had not passed away in 2007, as the new author managed to fill out pages without employing Jordan's literary tics.  He also recaptured some of the energy of the early books, though he didn't always sustain it through all of the plot threads that needed to be resolved in plausible fashion.  And the ~200 page chapter of the final battle is ridiculous, though perhaps inevitable given the multi-book build-up.

For readers who have limited time and/or budget (the complete series will set a reader back by at least $150), I recommend steering clear of this series in favor of smaller series and stand-alone works.  During my recent re-read, I was able to skip several dozen chapters in books 8 through 11 because I knew basically nothing happened.  What's the point in paying for all those words if they are basically useless?  For readers who feel they've read all the other major series, or who want to read one that has been completed, The Wheel of Time is a decent if somewhat mindless way to fill up time.  Readers should keep internet access internet handy, as they are likely to want to look up characters vaguely remembered from previous chapters without having to pick through the earlier books.