Upon finishing this book and reading the author's list of people he'd like to thank, I was slightly disappointed not to see the late Douglas Adams there. Because there is no doubt that the writing style was strongly influenced by HHGTTG and other works in that series.

This isn't sci-fi, at least not in the traditional sense, but neither is it fantasy in the traditional sense. It's in some ways akin to the worlds built by Neil Gaiman, where a normal existence is suddenly overlaid by elements of the fantastic. And if you like Gaiman, and Pratchett, and Adams and so on, you'll probably enjoy this.

The downsides: this was the author's first novel, and it shows. There are some over-complicated plots, and the cast of characters is perhaps a little too large to fully get to grips with, and as every one of them has more than one unpleasant character flaw it's hard to feel much sympathy for the plight of any of them. But it's a good story with some nice touches and a couple of unexpected twists in the tale.