I'd wanted to read this one for a long time. Enjoyable, if not as effervescent and sublimely funny as the first few Hitchhiker books. I will say that it struck me as very odd that Douglas "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe there are fairies at the bottom of it too" Adams would be trucking with ghosts, and I expected him to really skewer the "holistic" end of things as well... but there you have it. Having most of the story set in the ordinary humdrum world, aside from the flashes of... well... other stuff... was a bit of a disappointment as well- it made things much more serious for me, which wasn't really what one picks up Adams for. Or perhaps I should say that the balance of funny and serious leaned much more heavily to serious here than I would have expected for something other than "Last Chance to See." I will also say that it annoyed me quite a lot that there's only one female character of consequence, and especially to have her role be to nag her boyfriend, one of the protagonists, about his childish and inconsiderate behavior... but take him back unquestioningly, especially when he all but abandons her after a truly traumatic loss! The other female characters are a little girl and someone so inconsequential she can't even get her boss to notice she's quit. It made me want to go back to the Hitchhiker series and see if there are any female characters at all aside from Trillian (again, whose role is mostly to be desirable and also to nag and suffer through the male characters' antics) and the girl Arthur ends up with. Oh, and the daughter, I suppose. I guess everyone in Adams books is either a bit of a putz or a nag... but still.

With all of that said, this really was enjoyable at times- that sparkling humor and unmistakable eye for the absurd that made me love his other work is still here, and I truly and longingly wish he had been around longer to work out some of the kinks.