Rating: 
Summary: Format issues outweighed by great reader and great story
Review: While I agree with the consensus that the story is, indeed, humorous, convoluted, completely interconnected, and ultimately a confusing but inspired delight, there are plenty of reviews to that effect, so I shall narrow my focus to the specific format in which I purchased it, which is the Abridged Audio CD edition, read by the author, on which there are many fewer comments.There are a few minor complaints about this edition. The six CDs packaged in a box of the size that, a decade ago, was used for double CDs, is novel, but the spindles hold the CDs to the tray so tightly that, removing them, one feels as if something's about to snap. The dynamic range is so great that, with any background noise at all (such as may be expected if listening in the car), the loud parts must be quite loud in order for the quiet parts to be heard. Though the cover boasts digital mastering, some high-end digital artifacts can be heard, the background squiggly sounds that one might hear in an audio stream at low dialup speeds. And, as in the case of the "Dirk Gently" audiobook, each disc contains only a single track of around 70 minutes. That last may pose a problem for listeners whose players return to the beginning of the track when stopped (luckily for me, my car player resumes where it left off); otherwise, these are, as I've said, minor issues. On the positive side, it is a great pleasure to hear Adams' voice reading his own work. He may have been a careful and crafty writer, but he also wrote in style often closer to speech than to literate prose. There are a few bits of wordplay that work better when seen on the page; but, on the other hand, his multiple-appositive sentences are much easier to sort out when one can actually hear where the emphasis was intended. I am not, generally, a fan of audiobooks -- not an opponent, either, but I do prefer the speed and lack of distraction of sitting down to read print. However, when there's time to listen, such as on the road trip for which I bought it, this particular book (and the book to which it is a sequel) is at least as enjoyable when read aloud by this particular reader as when I previously read the paperback. The sum of my experience -- which weighs the unimpressive format against the delight of Adams' performance, and, of course, of the story itself -- is well-represented by a solid four stars.
Rating:
Summary: The Gods are alive and kicking
Review: Why would the Norse God Thor be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15.37 to Oslo? That is exactly the question Dirk Gently, a special kind of detective who uses his spiritual insight for his investigations, needs to get answered as fast as possible. Somehow the exploding Heathrow Airport ticket counter seems to be connected to Dirk's latest -and late- client, found only this morning with his head quite independently revolving atop the hit record "Hot Potato". It is time to get his holistic view on the world in practice, because the hostile attentions of a stray eagle and the murderous dirty refrigerator make the life of our intergalactic sleuth less attractive than he is used to. When reviewing any book written by Douglas Adams, you are immediately forced -by some unseen intergalactic force- to compare it to the Hitchhiker's Guide series. No need in trying to resist this urge, so here it goes: The Gently books are probably not as hilarious as the Hitchhikers Guide series, yet they are still very funny. Voila! Now that that has been cleared, it is time to formulate some useful comments. Be warned! When you decide to read The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul know that you will have to immediately reread it once you turn the last page. The storyline is so complex and mind bogglingly absurd that you will conclude more than once that Douglas must have been completely stoned while writing this novel. But don't panic! In the end everything comes together in an apotheosis of pure grandeur. The denouement is so perplexing that you can only continue by rereading the complete novel.
The jokes and gags are not the strongest point of the book, but the absurd situations and the entertaining storyline compensates this easily.
Since The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is the sequel to Dirk Gently and the Holistic Detective Agency, I guess it is recommendable to start with the first novel, although I did not do this and still had some great fun.
| 
