“There was no good reason for it; I just felt it was time to get out in the world.. get angry and tune the instruments… go to Hawaii for Christmas.”

Hunter and Ralph are in Honolulu to cover the marathon towards the end of the year of 1980. Toss in a wild man named George Skinner, and a dope lawyer with a blue arm, and let the madness begin!
“Why did we come all the way out here to what used to be called “the Sandwich Islands” to confront some half-wit spectacle like eight thousand rich people torturing themselves in the streets of Honolulu and calling it sport?”

Things go so insanely gonzo, that by the end of it all, our good doctor claims to be the coming of the god Lono, swinging a great, destructive Samoan war club, and screaming at the locals! This book has all the qualities I've enjoyed in a HST story, and I'm glad that it finally caught my attention! Steadman's art is on full display in this volume, horrifying and wonderful! And, there are inclusions of excerpts from various historic source materials about Hawaii, and specifically Captain James Cook. They provide brief respites of sanity from Hunter's crazed booze and drug filled Hawaiian adventure! ( )

The last great work of Gonzo. After this, HST had nowhere to go but downhill. ( )

I had never heard of this until I saw it in the Taschen catalog. The volume and illustrations are lovely. The writing is unmistakably HST, if a little below the genius of Fear and Loathing. I laughed out loud several times, and cringed more often than that. ( )

Started out like an 80s version of Fear an Loathing in Las Vegas but got less intense and more tedious as the story (and HST himself) lost focus and bearing. One of HSTs weaker but still a good book and the writing you expect.
3.5/4 ( )

The good doctor goes on an ill advised vacation and imagines himself the reincarnation of a hawaiian God. Thompson will always be one of my favorites authors, and even is somewhat not as sharp as usual here, he still delivers an amusing story. Profusely illustrated by his fellow vacationer, Ralph Steadman. ( )