And Another Thing...: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Book 6

Having first been introduced to the Guide back in the late 70's and a teen, I proudly say I'm a long time fan. I've absorbed it ALL... even the poorly done movie. The Vogons looked good.I wasn't sure what to think when I first heard that Mr Colfer was to write the sixth book in the 'Hitchhiker's' trilogy.I do enjoy his 'Artemis Fowl' books. While reading them I had commented on how his style and humor was similar to Douglas Adams. Closer than I knew!First: I'm glad this was no vanity project. The widow Adams approached Mr Colfer to write this book, not the other way around. The story goes that Mr Colfer questioned whether or not he should do it or not. I, for one (of many) am glad he did.This reads as the perfect continuation of the series.There are nods to the original radio shows. There are nods to the recent radio shows. There are nods to the books. The continuity is just as fantastic as the continuity was between the original radio series and the Above the Title production series.I did have some problems with the book but there were few and far apart and mostly had to do with how I felt a character should behave. I find Random Dent to be just hideous... but then, Douglas wrote her as a pain in the ass. It would have been worse if Mr Colfer made her pleasant just because.I LOVE the bits with Ford (who has always been my favorite).I LOVE the bits with Zaphod.I was thrilled to see more of Wowbagger. A great way to bring forth a character who previously was a one-liner throw away.Trillian is fine.Random... meh...Thor!!!I really hope Above the Title produces this as a new radio series while all the actors are still with us!!(I'm guessing that most of the really bad reviews are by people who haven't read the book and are just acting like Adams purists or something. If you're really a fan of H2G2, please! do yourself a favor and give this book a chance. You might end up pleasantly surprised!)

This feels like a must read for me, to get some closure after the death of Douglas Adams and the seeming demise of his clever band of characters. Though I enjoyed some furtherance of the characters, I was not nearly as compelled to delve into the book, flipping page after page as I was when I read the ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The new format of 'guide notes' rather than random run on sentences like the original, broke up the story a bit to me, and seemed to take me out of it. Colfer did an outstanding job, though, of mirroring Adam's quirky style and dry satirical comedy, but he didn't explore much new territory which each previous book had. The story was full of great references to the former books and the universe it had built, but he didn't add anything new to that universe. But that may have been intentional as a show of respect for his great predecessor, so I can't really knock it for that. I was a bit disappointed that Arthur and Ford were not nearly as prominent of characters in this story. With all that said, the last act of the story brings things together and gives satisfying-ish endings in the very froody hitchhiker's style. All in all, I view this book as a must read for Guide fans for its loyal nods to the original as well as a wrap up that it seems Adam's may have gotten around to if it wasn't for his untimely demise. You will enjoy, but at your own peril!

As a huge fan of Douglas Adams (I have read all of the Hitchhiker's Guide books 4+ times!), I was very excited to hear that there was another book "in the series" to read. I am glad that I bought it, and I would again, but I suppose that it would be hard not to be a bit disappointed. The book had all the right elements, all the great characters, etc., but it didn't really "flow" well. As a whole, it seemed like someone was trying to "check off all the boxes" for a Hitchhiker's Guide book by assembling leftovers and outtakes from the original books. Don't get me wrong, I was still glad to have the new book to read, but I guess it just further highlighted what a loss it was to have Douglas Adams die at such a young age. I would still recommend the book to his fans, but just warn you to keep your expectations low so that you can enjoy it for what it is... A nice tribute, that does a reasonable job of carrying on the story a bit further down the road.

To be honest I was prejudiced against this book before starting it. I was a first generation devotee of the original in all its 3 formats the radio, tv and books. As the series grew into a 5 part ‘trilogy’ the cracks were already showing. The original radio/tv/2 volumes told a complete story that came to a tidy end with a clear point, it was clever, funny, reflective and refreshing. The subsequent volumes of the series struggled a bit with a coherent story, the fantastical plot twists in multi-dimensional-space-time were often too forced for comfort and some sequences were a bit long and tortuous (the Krikit Wars in particular). But Adams had a personal style of writing, the characters were his and told in his voice retained their humour and reflection, that was enough to make great reading.Over 15 years after the last part of the ‘trilogy’ and a shortly after the death of Adams any new book written ‘from Adams’s notes’ was always going to look suspiciously like something done for financial gain by the publishers rather than for any artistic merit. And so it was. There is nothing terribly wrong with it but nor is there much to like about it either. Zaphod Beeblebrox needs to be written in the Big A’s voice anyone else writing the character, irrespective of their qualities, just isn’t going to feel like the real thing; the same is true of Arthur, Ford and Trillian. There is also the issue of the missing Marvin, come on if you’re going to do swan song you need the full cast.Eoin Colfer was never going to win here, if he had tried to keep to Adams’s style it would have looked fake but imprinting his own dents the characters – a lose, lose situation (unless you are counting the cash). The strength of Adams’s work was always his characters and here they are not the same, Zaphod is smarter, Ford more hedonist, Arthur has become competent (even wise), Marvin is missing and Trillian – actually I wasn’t especially happy with the Trillian character by end of ‘Mostly Harmless’ the only female characters (Trillian and Random) in the series were less than positive images of womanhood (okay the males are hardly great representatives of maleness but they are utterly likeable in way that Trillian wasn’t in the end).If you’re a devotee I guess you ought to read it but set expectations low and you won’t be too disappointed. I did after reading this try Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books and I can see why he was chosen to have a go at this gig, I know I’m a bit old for them but I am enjoying them, a lot more than ‘And Another Thing’ which really ought not to be a thing at all. It is however only a book and can’t do much harm.

After the disappointing fifth Hitchhikers book Mostly Harmless I hoped that this would be some kind of improvement. Sadly however, it wasn't. Colfer seems to think that in order to write a Hitchhikers book you have to unneccissarily include almost every single character and almost every single reference from all five of Douglas Adams books. The result is nothing more than fan-fiction and I read it right to the end just to get an accurate representation of it although I wished I hadn't. One-off one-joke characters such as Wowbagger and also the Major Cow (or rather a whole herd of them) get major speaking roles which make them out as the one-dimensional single-use characters Adams knew they were. Wowbagger particularly is given a lead role in the book and Colfer tries to make him into a likeable character but fails and resorts to writing him out before the end of the book by claiming that he has married Trillian and gone on a honeymoon with her. Frequent Hitchhikers guide entries that don't actually read like Hitchhikers entries but rather unneccessary explanations of something that doesn't need explaining break up the narrative and make it run as smoothly as a car with a dodgy engine and three wheels missing! Special features at the end of the book also give revelations about Colfer himself. He seems to think that an adult book is a kids book with 'a lot of fart jokes and a lot of crass humour' which it isn't. As for the non-appearance of Marvin he arrogantly tells one person in the special features at the end of the book 'Marvin is dead, get over it!' He never questions the fact that Marvin is around 35 times older than the universe itself due to time travel and the characters could have bumped into one of the time travelling versions of the android. All in all it's a kids book by a kids author that has been badly adapted for adult readers.

Three stars in Amazon means 'It's OK', and I think that does sum up this book.As a massive H2G2 fan, I was dubious about this book coming out - did it really need to be written? I'm not so sure, though it is based on notes and plans made by Douglas Adams (as you will see if you read the Salmon of Doubt - highly recommended incidentally).Eoin Colfer is a very gifted and able writer, but his main area is teen fiction, and unfortunately that shows in this book. There are some clever ideas, but the humour never really gets beyond the adolescent, which is a big let-down for Adams fans. It is this that is the major let-down, rather than the storyline, which holds up reasonably well but drifts into subject areas that as a Hitchhiker's reader, you're not totally comfortable with.In short, it's an OK book, and I suspect most H2G2 fans will purchase to complete the set. Did it need to be written? By Adams, perhaps, but anyone else? No.

Sorry but this just didn't work for me. About three quarters of the way through I could see a story falling into place but then it just fizzled out. It was a bit like a spin-off from a great sit-com but didn't work because of the absence of too many key elements: Arthur Dent was barely featured; Ford had lost many of his more "endearing" features; Random was unrecognizeable; no Marvin; no real Fenchurch...I began to think that I must have misunderstood the earlier parts. Just a lack of consistency - or maybe I'm getting too old and just don't get it.All credit to Eoin Colfer for keeping the whole thing alive but I think Douglas Adams was the only person who could get the balance just right.I was part of the radio audience for the first ever transmission of the first episode and enjoyed every second of all 5 phases. Perhaps my expectations were too high but this didn't inspire any of the delight I found in phases 1 - 5

Eoin Colfer is a good writer but sadly not up to Douglas Adams' standards. He does a good just of reproducing the style of the previous five books but lacks that way with works that made Douglas Adams so great. Adams had a way with the English language which allowed him, in a sentence or two, to encapsulated the absurdity of really and at the same time ridicule it. Thus his books as pack full of wonderful quotations while this lacked any. I believe Eoin Colfer took on this project with the best of intentions, sadly it was never going to work.