I am a huge fan of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I own the book, the movie and the TV series, pretty much everything except the radio series. So when I heard that there was another book in the series being released after Douglas Adam’s death and it would an original book written by someone else, I was skeptical. But I recently heard an interview with Eoin Colfer and it made the book (And Another Thing…) sound somewhat interesting. The author clearly had a decent sense of humor and I thought I’d try it out. I should have stayed with my gut instinct. The books wasn’t bad, it wasn’t horrible, it was simply boring and not Douglas Adams. I gave up after about 100 pages. So let’s see what went wrong.
The book started with all our main characters significantly older and having done different things in their life. Trillian is a news reporter, her daughter (with Arther) Random is president of the galaxy and so on. It turns out that these are all dreams and they are all back on Earth and the Vogons are going to try and destroy it…again. And this time, they are going to destroy it in all universes.They are rescued by Zaphod and The Heart of Gold, where Eddie the computer has been replaced by Zaphod’s now detached second head. Ford messes up the second head and they are doomed (for the second time in 50 pages). This time they are rescued by Wowbagger (the immortal being who is insulting the universe in alphabetical order) with a promise by Zaphod to get Wowbagger killed by the god Thor. Since Wowbagger no longer wants to be immortal, a compromise is reached and they’re off.
At this point, I was pretty much bored to death. The writing was dry with little of the humor or sparks of fun that characterized Douglas Adams’ writing. Overall I was very disappointed and didn’t feel like reading the rest of the book. I gave the book 100 pages to catch my attention and entertain me and it failed to do so. Not recommended.