One good sign of a very bad fan is when he finds out about the latest book in a "trilogy-ish" written by one of his favourite authors only by strolling into a bookstore and being told about it by the pleasant, hippie-like shopkeeper. But then again, I wouldn't go to great lengths to blame this faithful reader given the fact that said author is dead, and would it really be too presumptuous to think that people ought to stop having books published once they're six feet under? Apparently so.
Out comes "And Another Thing...", the sixth instalment in the H2G2 hexology (formerly pentology, originally trilogy), written by Douglas Adams' ghost Eoin Colfer, who was the anointed writer for the book. Douglas Adams had supposedly cherished this wish to write a sixth book to sort of wrap things up, tie loose ends together and what-not, and since he couldn't be bothered to live long enough to write it himself, he let somebody else finish the job. Of course, the fact that the H2G2 franchise is worth more than some small countries might also have had something to do with it.
So, I bought it last night and just finished reading it. It's surprisingly short. Maybe I'm just too used to those Harry Potter books, so that any book with less than 700 pages looks like a pamphlet to me. Anyway, I won't go on about the story too much, but the writing is something of a curiosity, given that it clearly endevours to replicate Adams' style. Yes, it's funny, um, in parts. Unfortunately, a fair bit of it is a just a tad overdone. A lot of H2G2 is about made up names of made up planets, solar systems, species and the like, but there's just too much of that in this book. It's pretty much impossible to read a single paragraph that does not contain at least one made-up word. It goes from entertaining to tiresome really quickly. Finally, there's no Marvin, which leaves the reader with a there's-something-missing-but-I-just-can't-put-my-finger-on-it sort of feeling.
Go get it while it's priced, uh, okayishly.
Labels: English
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