R-r-read

To say this book was bad would be a little harsh, but to say it was good would be too generous. The things that made the first two books so good, Zaphod and Ford’s determination to be as lazy as possible but still reach their goals, Arthur being perpetually lost, Marvin’s sarcasm and chronic depression - those things all seem to have been replaced.

The beginning of the book was promising and I had hopes this would be better than the last two I had read in the series, but once Arthur’s daughter Random is introduced the book takes a nosedive. Not only was Random completely shallow and had no depth, there was no reasoning for any of the million frustrating things she did. She was violent, stupid, and moody like most teenagers are at some point, but these characteristics were so exaggerated without any kind of break that it came to the point where I was like "God, please just kill her off. I don’t care how, just get rid of her PLEASE."

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and the book continues to follow her completely pointless path back to Earth, where the book ends, like the last two, at an illogical place that I believe is supposed to be a cliff hanger but feels more like the last ten pages of the book were deliberately ripped out for no damn good reason.

As much as I loved the first two books and think the series had great potential, I think Adams may have missed the mark on the other books in the series, especially Life, the Universe, and Everything and Mostly Harmless. Not completely of course, but they definitely were not written on the same level as the first two within the series.