Mostly Harmless

Mostly Harmless Douglas Adams Date: 2005-07-13 17:58:47   —   $7.99   —   Book product page Rating:

Fiction, Sciene Fiction/Humor

It's easy to see why people hate this book. After the fairly graceful end of So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish, Adams writes this as though he were forced to go back to characters he was through with, and so he writes this so as to definitiveky prevent a sequel. First he dispatches with Fenchurch without a second thought, then he removes the wit and whimsy of the Guide. He brings back the Vogons and generally makes life miserable for his primary characters. There are a few flashes of the typical Adams absurdity, but in general, this book is plodding towards a very final ending.

Which, of course, is very much at odds with the blurbs on the cover that speak wildly of Adams' "zany, nonsenseical mayhem." Perhaps they didn't actually read this book's predecessors.

My advice? Skip it. Read the first four books and call it good, then go on to Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which is not nearly so bittter.