eMusic Review 0

eMusic Contributor

09.17.07

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

2007 | Label: Random House Audio

The second installment of Douglas Adams' famed five-part trilogy.
Picking up where The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy leaves off, Douglas Adams continues the adventures of Arthur Dent, Zaphod Beeblebrox and a morose little robot named Marvin in this, the second installment of his five-part “trilogy." Set in a science fiction fan’s dreamland of anxiety-ridden psychic elevators, diurnal anomalies and moderately edible towels, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe follows Arthur, Zaphod, Ford Prefect and Trillian on their continued journey through space and time and a persnickety little conundrum known as the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.

Brilliant as it is, Restaurant is not a stand-alone read (or listen). Without a solid background in Hitchhiker as an anchor a reader (or listener) could find herself mighty confused as she attempts to follow Arthur, Zaphod and Trillian away from the huge supercomputer in which they once resided (you and I know it as planet Earth) in their Improbability Drive spaceship while Arthur desperately attempts to make a cup of tea at the precise moment the ship is attacked by Vogons. See what I mean? The plot is incredibly dense, and Adams dives right in — no exposition, no refresher course.

Listening to Martin Freeman’s (of the UK The Office fame) lilting, slightly beleaguered British accent, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect narrator for this audiobook (and that’s even taking into account Adams’ own 1990 version). Perhaps it’s because Freeman has an intimate knowledge of the material — he played Arthur Dent in the 2005 film version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It's okay

Martin Freeman does an okay job of narrating. Not nearly as good as Stephen Fry though. I hate to say this because Martin played Arthur Dent in the movie version and I quite liked him in that role. The main problem though is this is a bad rip. The CD this came from stutters and skips in many places and this detracts greatly from the listening experience.

Martin Freeman is great...

I think Martin Freeman did a great job with the reading. In addition to performing the reading, he also provided different voices and accents to the different characters, including an amusing Brooklyn accent for Zaphod. Very enjoyable, but there are numerous rip errors. eMusic, you need to preview your books better. I've purchased more than 200 albums from you and haven't had this problem, but the first two audio books (this, and "Life, Universe and Everything") both had several errors. I would also appreciate a higher bitrate. The sound quality is somewhat lacking. Still, it's a good value, assuming the bad tracks are fixed.

Gets better as it goes

Quite a step down from the lofty genius of Stephen Fry who narrates the Hitchikers' Guide and he starts off apparantly suffering from a blocked nose and somewhat ill at ease with the characters he's trying to portray. Still, as the story progresses, he finds his place and starts to add more feeling and passion to the characters. This book suffers major corruption mid-file, some at really unfortunate times, like during the explanation of tenses by time travellers. Sound quality is also mediocre but adequate.