This is the sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy and is written by Eoin Colfer.

I loved the original trilogy, when there were just three books. The fourth and fifth weren't of quite the same level of genius.

Eoin Colfer has made a decent stab of continuing the story, but I found this book very hit-and-miss. There were some moments of pure genius, especially in how he manages to bring the characters back from the dead, but some of it just doesn't work at all.

It is worth reading, but don't have high expectations. ( )

An interesting appendum to the hitchhikers trilogy. ( )

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't Douglas Adams. The guide notes were a bit annoying at times. Also, Trillian felt very out of character to me. I had so been looking forward to the book, but I was left feeling a bit unsatisfied. ( )

To say that I disliked this book would be an understatement. I have only finished this book because I despise leaving books unfinished. Now, I told myself when I sat down to read it that I had to judge this book on two criteria, I had to judge it as a novel in it's own right and I have to judge it as a hitchhikers book, but as I read the only point I kept coming back to is that this is an awful hitchhikers book, miles worse then any Douglas Adams wrote. It completely lacks the wit and sparkle of the original and instead is full of in-jokey refrences and giant gaps in logic.

Let me tell you how I think this book was written. I think Eoin Colfer sat down and read the first five books, making a list of witty things he could refernce. He then forgot all of that and made a plot...or maybe he already had the plot and he dug it out of a drawer somewhere. Anyway, he had this plot and he thought "hey, that's ok" and, yeah, it's not bad. The problem, it doesn't work with the hitchikers characters, it doesn't fit with the general way a hitchhikers story plays out and this guy just flat out isn't as funny as Douglas Adams.

No problem! Insert an excuse to make all the characters out of character and ignore any other problems and you have this book.

To tell you everything that I disliked about this book would take far too long so let me give you the main things this really made me angry.

1. Trillian.
Now, some of you may remember Trillian from the other books. She was the woman. Apparently that's as far as Eoin Colfer got into her character. In the first five books she is not just a woman. She is intelligent, educated, driven, level headed and damn curious to see the universe. In fact, she is arguably the only main character to posess a high level of any of these atributes. She worked out what was going on at Kricket when everyone else was lost. She has continually asserted her independence.
Guess what she does in this book? She meets a man, they have tension, they kiss, he is injured, she faints, they confess, they run away to get married and live happily ever after.
It was the marriage that got me, I have to admit. My mental picture of Trillian doesn't fit with the idea of her first thought when she's met someone she's attracted to being that she might like to marry them. She's just not that girl. Date, sleep with, sure. Marry...definetley not something to consider right of the bat.
Then the fainting. This is kind of typical of who Trillian is protrayed. She worries more about her looks then she ever would. It seems someone tipped her brains out and replaced them with cotton wool. Can you imagine Trillian who walked of into space to talk with the diffused cloud of a supercomputer intent on destroying everything ever fainting at someone being injured, even someone she was TTLY IN WIW WIF!!!!!!

2. Wowbanger the infinitely prolongued
You may remember this character from that one shot joke. He's the guy going around the universe insulting everyone who's ever existed in alphabetical order. Here's what he apparently didn't know about him. He'd an idiotic emo who just wants to be WUVVED!!!!! Seriously. First, the emo. My god, the emo. e goes on about his bloody existence and how woeful it is. He'd meant to be annoyed, pissed of, not a my chemical romance song.
But the big thing, the logic of him. Ok, we've got this guy with an infinite lifespan who's decided to insult everyone ever, in alphabetical order, and in order to do so is travelling backwards and forwards through time. So, he shows up for Zaphod Beeblebrox...and he remembers Arthur. First, he's insulting everyone ever so he's not going to remember Arthur. Aruthr is kind of a forgetable guy. Second, presuming last names as what will be in alphabetical order...he's come for Beeblebrox after Dent. He then says she's glad he got there in time to insult some more people before the planet blew up. Time travel, you guys! He can travel back to before the planet blew up. He then reveals that he'd given up the alphabetical thing and is insulting them by planet...because that's less predictable. Lolwat?? much?

3. The guide notes
I love Adams' footnotes. I hate Colfer's guide notes. I hate them becasue they claim to be from quide articles but quite clearly can't be because of how they're written. And they're in the text. Could they be more disruptive? NO. You're reading and suddenly you have two paged of text claiming to be a guide note but written in a terrible style about something almost entirely irrelivant. One of these appears at a tense point. I hate them.

Those are my three biggest, ok. To keep this short, no more detail, but other things that annoyed me: Zaphod is an idiot but he's not so incredibly stupid that he can't work out how to open a door or wahtever, Random is not a goth, Ford has a sense of adventure, Arthur does not have a sense of adventure, they get out of certain death through the infinite improbability drive...again, The bloody cows!, where did Zaphod even get a planet (and why would he sell it to humans when probably all the resources on earth couldn't buy one, he must be making a loss), Gods aren't species with planets, they're gods, when searching for a god, you'd think he could include soemthing more original then Cuthulu and Gaia, Wowbanger getting the imortality knocked out of him

Oh yeah...also...

When Wowbanger and Trillian meet we're told they're going to end up married.

Later, a plot point involves us wondering if Wowbanger will die. He hasn't married Trillian yet. No he won't. Tension over.

Yeah, I could go on but I think my point is made. If I hadn't re-read the hitchhikers books coming up to reading this I might have been more impressed but I did and this is NOT a hitchhikers book, it's a mess and a waste of my hard earmed money. ( )

Not having read a HG2G book in many years it was easy not to get hung up on the intricacies of how close it comes to the previous entries. What Colffer provides is an enjoyable sci-fi romp, which frequently steps from the witty in to the ridiculous, with all the characters one would expect, including Vogons! The narrative never really provides any tension or real page-turning power, however the story wends its way through the universe with some interesting ideas and plenty of excerpts from the Guide to provide the required familiarity. The lack of propulsion ends in an unforgettable if somewhat amusing read. Sci-fi humour is a difficult genre to master, even Adams was hit and miss, and as such this is more hit than miss. ( )