“And Another Thing…” Book Review

And Another Thing... Book Review

Sydney Mis, Co-Editor

And Another Thing… by Eoin Colfer is the final book in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy”. The novel starts off with Ford, Arthur, Trillian, and Random in a near-death situation. Their old friend Zaphod rescues them and they begin another adventure across the galaxies. But meanwhile, a small group of earthlings survived Earth’s demolition and they colonized on a planet named Nano. The planet was corrupt because they were in need of a god to worship and a civil war against two groups was breaking out. The Vogons, who were ordered to exterminate all earthlings, set off to Nano. Zaphod’s ship is doomed because its control systems (Zaphod’s left brain) was frozen accidentally by Ford, but and immortal named Wowbagger saves them but he wants to die. Zaphod was angered by Wowbagger’s insults so he promised he will have Wowbagger killed, which is what Wowbagger wants because he was a depressed immortal who wanted to die. Zaphod goes to get Thor to kill Wowbagger and in a series of intertwining events, Thor and Wowbagger “battle” on Nano, while a romance is budding among the group and the Vogons are still heading their way.

This last book was not written by Douglas Adams due to his death so Colfer wrote it instead. A major difference between the two authors was the length of the chapters. Adams not only had unique plots, but unique lengths of chapters. Some chapters would be two pages and others would be twenty. However, with Colfer, most chapters were twenty pages or more. The length of chapters may seem like a minor difference, but with Adams’s style, the books flowed more, were more enjoyable to read, and showed Adams’s abruptness and uniqueness.

Most of the books in this series were written in the 1980‘s and 90’s but this book was written in 2009. The other books showed technology that was unheard of—in the 80’s and now.  But in this 2009 book, some technologies mentioned were that of today, like smartphones for example. This other difference showed how this book lacked another one of Adams’s unique writing qualities—strange and unheard of technology. Besides that, the writing styles remained pretty similar.

Besides the different authors, the book was very enjoyable. All the characters were reunited while new ones were added.  When these characters reunite and come together, the reader knows anything, as random as it may seem, can happen at anytime and anywhere. I wasn’t too fond of the very last part of the ending but it did show how most of the book series was a constant struggle to find home and actually stay there without the fear of being attacked at any moment.

The series has come to an end, and if you want to read a series that will make you laugh out loud like a maniac and chuckle on every page, then read this series and you won’t regret it!