And Another Thing...

perhaps I am atypical - let's scratch that and start over, shall we? I am atypical when it comes to many things: the Hitchhikers guide to The Galaxy is one of them. Or 6, if we're being both pedantic and relatively modern.

This means that unlike practically everyone else that's read them in my circle, I didn't find the books to be howling mad, nonstop laugh out loud factor material. of course they were very good, [a:Douglas Adams|4|Douglas Adams|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1189120061p2/4.jpg] was a superb storyteller. Interestingly enough, perhaps my favourite of the series was [b:So Long and thanks for all the Fish|8698|So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide, #4)|Douglas Adams|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51OfUSdzfiL.SL75.jpg|3078120] - which, by a staggering coincidence, is that least enjoyed by my peers. I did mention my abnormality problem?

So when I learned of Colfer's planned sequel to this most talked-about series, I was able to distance myself from the highly-charged emotional impact felt and voiced by many on the matter. and there WERE many, many who couldn't do the same, many who did indeed have something to say on the matter and many more with absolutely no intention of buying a book in Adams' series, written by "an outsider". The preceding 200 words have pretty much boiled down to "I was looking forward to reading this, but as I didn't consider the original series to be the Holy Grail of modern literature, wasn't going to be overly prejudiced".

Even so, I think it's a bit of a balls-up, to be quite frank. not insofar as the characters are concerned - Colfer has clearly and deftly managed to win them all over to his style of writing (with the possible exception of Ford who I felt was as out-of-character as a wardrobe in a nudist colony). The problems I have are the complete juxtaposition with the whole milieu of the series - 61 Guide Notes dotted all over the place like barfed-up post-it stickers, for instance.

And now we come to what is perhaps my most irritating irritant - the Irishman. "What was an Irishman without tea?" Is one of the lines relating thereto. As if shattering the uniqueness of one of Arthur's remaining comforts isn't enough, the scattering of "Bejaysus!" everywhere and the ridiculous leprechaun-filled Irish affectations truly, I am sad to say, ruin this for me. There are some things indefinably Adams about the series - the BBC, for one. Lord's Cricket Ground, for another. Chesterfield sofas, marvin, Eddie. these were quintessentially Adams. Unintelligible irishmen, made-up religions and the aging of Eccentrica Gallumbits (the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6) are most certainly not.

I'm a big colfer fan, having enjoyed many of his works. In this instance, though, I feel he's taken the opportunity to become far too indelible to this volume. it's very 'him', and not particularly five-star Frood material. I enjoyed it as a story. As part of the series? Next...

Quite obviously, Colfer has taken Adams' penchant for throwing everything into the mix to see what sticks to heart. The pages of And Another Thing... are teeming with the absurd asides that were the hallmark of HG2G's style. Admittedly, such tangents can get tiresome, and Colfer arguably uses a few too many funny words and silly noises, but Adams was hardly above a bad pun or two himself.

Not a lot of Colfer's plot makes any sort of linear sense, but the series has always had a great deal of fun playing with notions of time and space anyway. And it's rather wonderful to be with old friends again, especially the terminally unlucky Arthur, pining for his lost love Fenchurch; as Random succinctly puts it, "I'm sure you'll bring doom down on us all presently. It's your destiny to be a cosmic Jonah." I also enjoyed Colfer's attempts to better humanize Trillian, a character Adams never fully explored and who came across initially as flighty and later as just plain unlikeable. If there's a real fault with Colfer's attempt, it's in his trying to cram too much in; there's too many nods to past novels, too many inside references, too many bloody characters doing too much at once.

Read the rest of the review here.