Rating: 
Summary: mmmmm
Review: Personal reviews can often be meaningless without some idea of the personal tastes of the reviewer. I love writers like Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. I love off-the-wall, bizarre humour. I think Monty Python is terrific. My favourite movies are made by the Coen brothers, experts in weird humour. I thought Road to Mars was an entertaining read....until I hit the appalling ending. Urghhh! Talk about writing in a twist just for the sake of writing in a twist! Road to Mars is easily the worst book I've read all year. Really, Eric. I expected so much more.
Rating: 
Summary: The Meaning of the End
Review: If you are having trouble with the end of the book, you may have never quite understood Python's bizzar sense of reality.
Rating: 
Summary: Complex and ambitious
Review: This book is not pythonesque, it is not this kind of book badly written by some star who can only get it published because he/she's a star. It's an elaborate, two-sided metaphysical thriller where lots of thought and personal experience can be found. One side is the story (the plot is quite prominent), which deals with very modern - sorry, modem - Gibson-like science-fiction, yet cleverly managing to keep the cartoon elements of your good old Star Wars space opera. The other side is the philosophy - a very acute backstage insight into the meaning of comedy as an explanation of the universe and a relief from humanity's burden. Like in the quantum theory, the narrator is part of the story and transforms it. There are also a satire of the charity business, rather pessimistic observations on the mechanics of political change, and a lot of strong and colourful (but not particularly likable) characters. I got quite hooked by the book and found it great in many ways. But I think it was wrongly advertised as a Douglas Adams-like piece of entertainment. It's complex and ambitious. Well done, Eric !
Rating:
Summary: GREAT FOR PYTHON FANS!
Review: I THINK THAT IT WAS VERY GOOD, IN THAT, ONE, IT IS VERY FUNNY. TWO, IN THAT IT IS VERY NICE. AND THREE, IN THAT IT IS VERY HARD TO LOSE YOUR PLACE WHILE READING IT, BECAUSE IT IS AN ABSOLUTELY MARVELOUS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: Depressingly disappointing
Review: I love a good 'light read' as another reviewer puts it. I love Monty Python. I love authors like Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. I'm willing to overlook the odd shortcoming or flaw in a book for the sake of a good story, and Road to Mars begins as a good story. The meaning of comedy theory is a little irriating, and disrupts the narrative flow, but one can always skip irritations. But no matter how good your story if you don't end it right then your lost, and the ending in Road to Mars is simply ludicrous. It just brings too many ridiculous coincidences into play. If you like big-budget Hollywood action films then you'll love Road to Mars. There are just as many gaping holes in the story.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as bad as people say...
Review: Ok, so people don't like the book. It wasn't genius, but it was clever and entertaining, a quick read, occasionally bogged down by self-indulgence (but hey! Look at Stephen King if you want an example of a self-indulgent, rambling style!). At least Idle managed to reel it in when he went off a little too long on his comedy thing. No, he's not Douglas Adams, but who can be? Adams is rife with Absurdism and philosophical irony. If you're careful enough, you may detect subtleties in Idle's style, too.Overall, I just want to say: get over it. And, if you've read Idle's book, you know what you can do if you can't take a joke.
Rating:
Summary: Books are meant to entertain..this one does!
Review: It must be sad to have such a personality you can't enjoy this book. It is not side splitting funny and was never meant to be. It is an amusing story about an andriod trying to understand the unique human trait of humour. Not just "comedy", but humour in all it complexities and variations. This part of the book is fascinating. Anybody who likes the plight of Data in STTNG will understand Carlton the androids journey of discovery. The terrorist side story is not epic stuff but amusing all the same. If most people just enjoyed a light read instead of analysing every paragraph then this books would score 5 stars more often! Very amusing and thought provoking book.
Rating:
Summary: Reviewer barnesgene is absolutely right
Review: Trouble is, the ending is such a let down it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. So bad you forget about all the good stuff. Monty Python may have been pure genius, but there's a big difference between a comic troupe writing performance material, and a lone member writing a novel. Eric Idle is no author.
Rating:
Summary: Read the following instructions
Review: Buy this book. Go out into your garden. Dig a hole. Place the book in the hole. Bury it. If you do it quickly you will get up a sweat and feel satisfied that at least you got some exercise, which is an entirely more fulfilling experience than reading this garbage. Compost is all it's good for.
Rating:
Summary: Hey, C'mon, Lighten Up
Review: I'd ask all my fellow critics to think a little about "Monty Python." First, it was silly, by and large, wasn't it? Oh, once in a while you'd get a whiff of profundity, but it was really just off-the-wall silliness most of the time. Well, that's what this book is - no ground-breaking tome about The Necessity of Comedy or Humans Adapting to Space, just a pleasant diversion for a quick read. I will grant you that this is no perceptive Douglas Adams futurism - Mr. Idle doesn't kill himself trying to excise the anachronisms - and I will grant you that this is one of the slowest starting books I've read in a long time. But to trash it wholesale, well, that's just going overboard. Save your pans for books that truly deserve them ("Bridges of Madison County" or "Celestine Prophecy" for instance). There's a lot to like in "The Road to Mars" actually. Why, the delineation of the "houseboat" that the heroes live in while en route to their gigs is worth a star all by itself.
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