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How does it stack up against Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency? I’ve always considered that book a bit of a masterpiece, and I believe it incorporates many elements of Shada.

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Well, as I say, the deck is stacked a bit in any direct comparison to one of Adams’ books. Roberts is good, but he’s no Adams. That said, it is a bit more accessible than ‘Dirk Gently’, which is as you say a masterpiece, but one that makes no concessions to its readers. (For example, if you don’t know the story behind Coleridge’s poem, much of the book is impenetrable, and Adams never really stops to explain that bit.)

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For example, if you don’t know the story behind Coleridge’s poem, much of the book is impenetrable, and Adams never really stops to explain that bit.

Really? Huh – I could have sworn that I learned about Coleridge not completing Kubla Khan from reading “Dirk Gently’s”. Of course I read it around the same time we were reading Coleridge in High School, so maybe it’s all running together in my memories.

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Cookie McCool said on October 24th, 2014 at 4:13 pm

I reckon only non-brilliant people deserve to die young then.

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Its been a while since I read it and I’ll admit that I don’t have any particular attachment to old-school Who but I remember thinking that the voice in this book felt very unlike the one we got with Hitchhiker and Dirk Gently. For all I know the person doing the adapting was meticulously loyal to the Adams script but it certainly SEEMS like one writer completely rewriting another’s story. I’m not saying it’s a bad story – it’s pretty good – but I am saying it doesn’t feel like Douglas Adams.

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@Malky: Oh, one thing I forgot – the plot is nothing like Dirk Gently. Professor Chronotis is more or less the same character (and his rooms in Cambridge are explicitly said to be his TARDIS) but the plot of ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’ is actually much more like the plot to “City of Death”, one of Adams’ other Who stories. The twists in ‘Shada’ will still be pretty novel to you even if you’ve read DGHDA.

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I checked out the book from my local library and I agree its a good read.

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Sean D. Martin said on October 27th, 2014 at 11:43 am

Really? Huh – I could have sworn that I learned about Coleridge not completing Kubla Khan from reading “Dirk Gently’s”.

I’m fairly sure you’re right about that. Adams provided enough info for readers to “get” what happened with Coleridge’s poem.

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